Getting Ready—E stablishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

Part 1, Establishing Professional Contacts

I have tried searching on the links provided for this assignment however I was not able to establish contact with any professionals. So I googled mostly focusing on professionals in Malaysia where I come from. I have sent out to two professionals so far and still awaiting for their respond. If I don't get anything from them by next week I may have to resort to the alternative option. 

Part 2, Expanding Resources

I will be studying the resources on the www,childresearch.net website. This is a non-profit organization who study and produce write-ups on their research on early childhood education. I am still browsing through the website. Will keep everyone posted on what I have learnt. 

Thank you.

My Supports

My main support in my life are my children. Of course before them was my parents. My children motivate me and push me to do the things that I need to be doing on daily basis. They are also my support in taking care of myself. I feel I should be happy and healthy so I can enjoy my time with them to the max. And through this I would like to set an example to them that they too have to take care of themselves all the time to be happy and healthy.

My parents are another main support in my life. They are always giving me the encouragement to go through any challenges in my life simply by being there for me at any given time. Just by knowing I have my parents behind me who are always wishing me nothing but happiness, peace and success, I know that I can move any mountains.

Without these two big supports in my life, it will be difficult for me to move on in this life. I feel almost like I have no purpose. It will be hard to motivate myself to be able to do anything that I am already doing or achieving right now. 

My Connections to Play

 

 My childhood play was natural, fearless, adventurous and full of explorations. I remember the years when I was hooked on Enid Blyton's mystery stories and me and my friends will go into the woods nearby our homes to find our own mysteries. We had our secret hideout in the woods where all of my friends and myself gather up during the school holidays. We were so excited when we accidentally bumped into a small waterfall in the woods and went there everyday to play in the water. 

 Our parents were at work. My grandma used to take care of us. We didn't have any cellphones then. We just knew when it was time for lunch or just go back. My grandma never came looking for us and rushed us to go back home. We always went back home dirty after playing for hours in the woods and have a healthy home cooked food and we slept like a baby at night. Life was good then. I should thank this week's blog assignment for bringing this up for me to reminisce on my lovely childhood. It brought back wonderful memories for sure.

 Play today is definitely different from what I had back in my homeland which is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. However, I am now currently living in Stavanger, Norway and I must say that the children here are living my childhood which was 25 years ago. The children here are so connected to the nature that everything they do even in school is about exploring it. My boys are going to the school here and they spend 75 % of their time in school, playing outside or exploring the nature. Even when they are home, they are always playing outside either cycling, playing in the playground or hiking into the woods. But back in my homeland, things have changed so much that children no longer play outside as much as I did before due to safety issues.
The nature of my play have had a tremendous positive impact in my life and childhood. I would say that it helped me to be confident about myself, create meaningful relationships with my friends, not scared to be adventurous but at the same time know my boundaries, trust my instincts and enjoyed appreciating this world from a child perspective.

Relationship Reflection

 I believe each and every relationships in my life have a direct or indirect impact on my development. I value and appreciate everyone of them however there are few which I will cherish forever.

 My relationship with my parents and my siblings have been the pillars of my life. They stand by me and support me through my ups and downs no matter what. My parents have sacrificed so much to make sure me and my siblings are where we are now. My parents have taught me how to be kind to other people and always respect the elders. They have always tried to motivate me positively whenever I am down. I have had the most memorable childhood memories with my siblings. 

 Both my brother and sister are my best friends in the world. They are also my best critics. I can always get an honest opinion on anything about me from them and vice versa. That had helped me a lot in improvising myself. 

 Currently, my relationship with two children seems like the reason why I am living. They make me reanalyze and prioritize my life a lot. I can see how much they need me right now in their and I am willing and trying to make most out of it and also make a positive impact in their life through our relationship. Challenges are many especially where there are differences in opinion and how we get back together after an argument affects the relationship. Since we were aware of this completely, we always made sure that nobody is angry with anyone in the family for a long time. We solve every arguments or issues almost immediately.

 I think my experience with my family have given a very positive impact in my life so much so I value each and every other relationship that I come across. Likewise, I am very sure that as a early education educator, I will not have much problem in creating and maintaining positive relationship with the children and their families.  

Thank you.

I would like to say a special thank you to all of my colleagues and to Dr Nagel especially. You all have been a great inspiration and motivation to me. I have learnt a great deal in this course especially in the areas of child development in three different domains and for three different age groups. It has been a very interesting journey for me so far in this course as I went through all the resources. With this knowledge, I continue my journey into early childlhood studies. I wish each and every one of my colleague all the best in their career journey as well. Thank you all. Thank you, Dr Nagel.

When I Think of Childhood

I have learnt a lot from this course and the most profound knowledge that I would take away with me is that knowing a child's brain develop based on his/her experiences. Let's focus on giving them the best experience so that they pick up all that they need to be successful and a better grown up in their life instead of just with feeding information into them so that they can score better in school. 

Testing for Intelligence?

I believe children should not be assessed and tested just for the sake of attaining marks. It should be done purely to observe if a child had acquired the skills that id appropriate for his age. And to help the child to achieve it if he/she is not really there yet. 

In Malaysia, where I come from, school going children are heavily assessed by exams. There is a very unhealthy competition going on in the school. It is has been weaved into their mind that scoring more marks on the test or exams is the ultimate goal in their school life because that will determine how successful they will be in their adult life. There is no room at all for developing other areas of a child's healthy growth for example their social emotional skills. 

I am currently living in the Scandinavian region. From what I have observed, the school going children here are not pressured into making it to the top of their class. They are exposed to much more interesting activities such as connecting to the nature by studying and being involved in it. I think children should be relieved from the pressure of reading and memorizing facts from a text books for the sake of attaining higher marks in their exams. This itself is stress for their developing brain.