Mindfulness and Purpose in Early Childhood Education

What is Crowdsourcing?     It's the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by getting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. (from Wikipedia)   Keeping ideas fresh is important for ECEs, and staying on top of collective ideas in the field is easier now with online access to pages, blogs, groups, and feeds.   It's almost too easy with a a virtual sea of information out there. If you want to get connected but feel too overwhelmed to start,   bookmark some of these online sources as starting points:   from programming to the latest news in the field, these pages are great if you've ever wanted to: Join a Facebook group   Follow a Twitter feed Follow a Pinterest page Listento a veteran voice in child care (Martha Friendly)

In this ever changing world of early childhood learning and theories, ECE's should never forget the roots and spirit of their early childhood education: CHILD DEVELOPMENT .  ECEs are masters in early child development.  It's what we do.  We know young children and how they develop. OBSERVATION SKILLS .   We watch and learn to make sure we know where our children are on the developmental scales. PROGRAM THROUGH PLAY . We set up play based environments based on our observations of children.  And every ECE, who wants to calls themselves an ECE, should be able to: •Make play dough. •Run circle time.  •Capture and maintain the creative imagination of young children. ____________________________ Want more information on how to become a mindful ECE?   Download the Mindful ECE Resource Collection.

FREE TO BE ME is a positive living skills program that develops positive perspectives,   life skills and stress control strategies in children through a variety of group and independent activities.   The program has been researched extensively and developed over a ten-year period by Dr. Terry Orlick, a renowned educator, internationally recognized mental training consultant and doctor of sports medicine.   Dr. Orlick developed the program in Ottawa, with the support of area schools and the Humanities Research Council of Canada. The program teaches children to think positively and focus effectively to improve not only their schoolwork, but to enhance their social skills and daily lives. The program uses a variety of activities that have been proven to increase children's ability to: ·          Relax effectively ·          Cope constructively with stress, conflict, ange...