This section is where students demonstrate their acquired and growing skills, their ability to put theoretical/in class learning and discussion into practice and where they will demonstrate their professional skills as early childhood educators, colleagues, and contributing members of effective early years teams.
Headings Students will use the following headings to reflect and organize the learning they are demonstrating.
- Professional skills: Reliability, punctuality, communication skills, problem solving, contributions to team, initiative, reflective practice and ability to listen to and adapt practice based on constructive feedback, etc.
- Practical Skills: Responsive/Relational Care of young children, roles, duties, tasks etc.
Resources
To better understand and plan for building evidence in this section please refer to:
- BC Child Care Sector Competencies
- ECED 1200 Moodle Section: Professional Foundations
- ECED 1350 Moodle Section: Observation
- ECED 1330 Child Guidance
- CYCA 2500 Human Development Birth to Age 8
- ECED 1340 Interpersonal Communication
ECED 1200 Documentation
December 2nd, 2024:
Day one of the practicum was mostly spent getting to know each of the children in the center. Beginning to learn names and what was expected of us in Gateway. On day one, we learned that the children are expected to be mostly independent in getting ready for outside. The rule was that children had to attempt on their own before they could be helped. It was a lovely introduction to the center and the Caterpillar room!
December 3rd, 2024:
Day two of the practicum I decided to more closely shadow my mentor, Kaia, to see what 1-1 support work looks like. I was also encouraged to look over the care plan for G to better understand why certain methods were used while working with her. Over the day I saw the struggles that came with 1-1 work, alongside the beautiful relationships that develop with effort. During the day, Kaia suggested that we work on introducing ourselves to parents. It was nerve-wracking but the effort was made to put that into practice and by the end of the day I’d introduced myself to most of the parents who entered the room.
December 4th, 2024:
Day three was when I began my concentrated effort to learn the names of each child within the Caterpillar room. With my pen and notebook in hand, I started making a point of specifically asking each child their name. When I got the names of each child I wrote down defining characteristics of their appearance as a way to help myself remember. When asking the children their names, I decided to use the ‘Ickity bickity bumblebee’ song. The response was good, and the children engaged, despite my mistakes. While I was attempting to learn names, two children of similar behavior/appearance introduced themself with the same name, L. It would take me until Monday the 9th to figure out why they both introduced themselves with the same name.
Over the course of the day we were asked to look over the care plans to be able to better support each child who has an active care plan.
During the day, many of the children asked me to join them in activities. Specifically, after nap time when a bunch of activities were laid out on the tables. One particular activity was shaving cream with food colouring and penguins hidden within. Four children asked me to join them at the station one after the other. When all was said and done, my hand was purple, and C, Ev, P, and Lo were quite happy that I joined them.
December 5th, 2024:
I was sick on day four, but made sure to let them know I was sick as soon as I was awake and knew I was too ill to go in.
December 6th, 2024:
When I came in on day five, I was presented with some papers with fill-in-the-blanks for each child. Asking for their name, their favorite toys, their favorite colour, their friends, and a fun fact about them. These papers created a way for me to organize my approach to getting to know the children. At Kaia’s suggestion, I backed off slightly and observed the children more as they played with one another. I was able to fill in quite a bit of the information on the sheets based just on observations. But, for specifics I needed to talk with the children. I spent a good amount of the day ‘interviewing’ the children. I casually talked with them while they went about their activities, or let the children come to me for a conversation.
As the day went on, it became easier to tell that the children were growing comfortable with us newcomers in the Caterpillar room. While outside the children wanted me to play a running game and I was happy to join them. As the day came to a close, children from the other classes joined us and the day ended with four children and myself colouring.
December 9th, 2024:
Day six was for the most part spent continuing the ‘interviews’ with the children. Getting to know more about them and who likes to play with who. P in particular was quite eager to sit down and be asked all about her interests, and showed a particular interest when I asked if she likes Taylor Swift (She was wearing a Taylor Swift shirt). Ev, P, and C have been hovering semi-near me since 9:30 and I’m happy that they are feeling comfortable around me.
Today I discovered that L and G both look up regardless of which name is called. Explaining away a lot of the earlier confusion I had between the two of them. They respond to both names and L responds better to G than his own name!
A large group of the children gathered around after snack time when a dinosaur book was grabbed and put on the ground in the quiet corner. They looked through the book together and asked me the names of the dinosaurs. In the afternoon I helped Daneeta with her lava lamp activity. Helping children with getting glitter, fake snow, and rocks into the bottles to make a sensory toy. When we went outside in the afternoon some of the children were climbing onto a log, and then one particularly adventurous girl, Em, wanted to jump to me from the log. I let her jump to me and soon enough I had a line of 6-7 children jumping to me from the log, or falling back onto me from the log. This continued for twenty minutes.
Back inside at 4:30 two girls asked to unbraid my hair. As the day was close to over, I let them do so, and they played with my hair until it was time for me to leave.
December 10th, 2024:
Day seven was quieter, I spent the morning with Ev, P, El, L, and Em. They were playing a cat game and wanted to play with me. They were quite excited that I would meow back at them. In the end, when that game was over, I stepped back and let the children come to me.
Except for X. I invited X to come and chat and spent some time getting to know him. Under the guise of another interview. He liked answering questions when they were put into an interview format, and most of the children seemed to quite enjoy that In the afternoon the quieter day continued, until we got outside and the children wanted me to continue catching them when they jumped off the log. I obliged and we did that until it was time to go inside at 4:40 P.M. (The ‘game’ began at 4~). To finish off the day a group of three children and the two of us (practicum students) coloured.
December 11th, 2024:
Day eight was big for me. The children have shown an intense interest in a dinosaur book within the room, and so I decided to expand on that interest and bring a much larger book of mine from home. Outside of that, I wandered between the children seeing how they were doing and having small conversations. During circle time I did a demonstration for a baking soda volcano, and after the children woke up they had the option to do the volcano themselves or any of the other activities that are frequently brought out as the children are waking up.
When the Children woke up from their naps most of them first went to the washroom, and it took a slight bit of time for them to begin with the activities. But, almost immediately there was a line of children waiting to make the volcano erupt in their chosen colour. After everyone did the activity once, I let the children come back to do it again. El in particular loved the activity and made the baking soda volcano erupt four separate times. When it was time for the activities to be cleaned up for snack, Ev suggested I make something from the resulting purple solution. Remembering the sensory toys that were made previously, I made a quick water shaker using the solution, glitter and some stones specifically intended for sensory toys. Ev enjoyed the water shaker quite a bit during the afternoon freeplay.
December 12, 2024:
The final day of practicum was another slow day. There weren’t any specific activities but instead, I focused on spending time with the children and I made sure to say goodbye to each child as they left, and made sure they knew I would see them again in the Spring.
The same jump off the log game continued during outside time, and I hit the mark of 10 children waiting in line to jump off the log. The children enjoyed the people game, and it was a nice end to outside time. For the last time this practicum, I let one of the children unbraid my hair. When 5 P.M. hit, I said a specific goodbye to each child and made my way out.
Overall:
I loved the experience at Gateway. I made sure that I was outside at 9:00 every morning and often left a few minutes after I was done at 5 so I could finish up what I was doing with the children. I helped with tidying when I wasn’t helping with the children. When we were told specifically to focus on the children and leave most of the rest of the work to them I did so. A specific task I stuck to and enjoyed was helping the children during nap time.
We were asked to not step in and handle big conflicts and to instead observe how they were handled. Small conflicts were frequent and often solved with a few words or even just asking the children how they think it should be solved. Often, when there was a conflict I would focus on attempting to comfort the victim first before helping mediate the children’s dispute if needed.