There are many aspects that contribute to the quality of an early childhood education program. However, often it's the most obvious facets that become the focal point: quality of education, dedicated, well qualified teachers and age-appropriate environment. Health, nutrition, and physical activity are not as often associated with quality in early childhood education, but they are indeed an essential part of any quality early childhood learning program.

Sylvia Davis is the Health-Nutrition Specialty Technical Assistant for the Delaware Stars program. Davis

Sylvia Davis

works with Stars early childhood programs across the state to help to ensure that every child is getting the proper nutrition and physical activity they need.

One of Davis' main responsibilities is providing technical assistance to early childhood educators and programs on how to effectively integrate health, nutrition and physical education into their classrooms. For example, Davis says she instructs teachers that you can have a meaningful discussion on nutrition with your early childhood program children during circle time.

"The goal is to get out into the programs and observe to make sure early learning programs are implementing health and nutrition in appropriate ways," Davis said. "For example, I often give suggestions and take along resources to demonstrate how an early childhood program can do a cooking activity with the young children."

Currently, Ms. Davis is creating two professional development sessions called Nutritional Building Blocks and One Size Does Not Fit All. She expects 20-30 trainees to come and learn about nutrition and physical activity. She says people don't usually realize how some foods and drinks are so high in sugar. For example, at her last training, she used various drinks to show "hidden sugar content."

"We had juice, sport drinks and soda and we read nutritional facts on back and broke it down using sugar cubes," Davis said. "Once they saw how much sugar is in one can they were like, 'Wow, we may want to rethink drinking that.'"

FULL STORY HERE 

Armed with breakthroughs in brain science and faced with increasing global competition, the country continues to talk, and in some cases, implement, educational reform to better prepare our children for the future. From the emergence of STEM education curriculum to the child-centered classroom, different teaching methods and philosophies are becoming widespread.

While it may all seem new, as Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote in the January 22, 2014 edition of Forbes Magazine, the future of education was invented in 1906, which was the year Dr. Maria Montessori introduced her revolutionary new education method.

Montessori is a philosophy and method of education that emphasizes the potential of the young child. The Montessori Method recognizes the child's natural curiosity and desire to learn.

"We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being." - Dr. Maria Montessori.

Dr. Montessori, the first woman to attend medical school and the first female medical doctor in Italy, developed her unique educational method through observation and experimentation. Her early observations of children have led to many of the current day trends and commonly accepted developmentally appropriate practices of early childhood education.

She was one of the first educators to realize that the most important and fastest brain development occurs in children from infancy to age six. Additionally, Dr. Montessori is credited with scaling the classroom environment to size introducing child-sized furniture and counters and sinks that young children could reach to create a safe and accessible setting which she believed encouraged exploration. She also observed that children learn through play, now well-documented as an important step in brain development for young children.

Modern day interpretations such as social intelligence, emotional intelligence, creative intelligence and multiple intelligences all have a direct alignment with Dr. Montessori's observations and conclusions of human brain development.

The Montessori Method is one approach that early childhood programs may elect.  Please contact us at earlylearning@state.de.us to share other approaches.