A well-established reference, INFANTS AND TODDLERS: CURRICULUM AND TEACHING, 7TH EDITION, presents a child-centered approach for the child care provider called conscious care giving. This important and well-rounded approach encourages a sense of empowerment and focuses on the respectful, purposeful, and careful handling of children in any child care setting. Reader friendly, realistic, and easily applicable to real life, the book emphasizes the child's growth and development, helping readers discover how they can best and most effectively influence that development. Overviews of key child care philosophies as they relate to the child, the caregiver, and parent involvement are presented along with case studies and personal perspectives of child care professionals, helping readers translate theory into practice. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Understanding the development of infants, toddlers, and twos equips caregivers with the tools and best practices needed to guide, teach, and care for them. This foundational approach provides information on theories of early development, components of high-quality, responsive caregiving, and strategies to support children in their earliest years.

The purpose of the Infant/Toddler Curriculum Framework is to provide early childhood professionals with a structure they can use to make informed decisions about curriculum practices. The framework is based on current research on how infants and toddlers learn and develop in four domains described in the Infant/Toddler Learning and Development Foundations—social-emotional, language, intellectual, and perceptual and motor development. It presents principles, a planning process, and strategies to assist teachers in their efforts to support children’s learning from birth to three years of age.

The first three years set the stage for a lifetime of learning. This book provides more than eighty activities and experiences to optimize very young children's intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development, as well as strategies that support responsive caregiving. Jean Barbre, EdD, has thirty years of experience working with children and families as a preschool director, teacher, therapist, college instructor, national and international presenter, and guest presenter on public television.