Category: Child Development

Breastfeeding Lesson Plan

There is nothing like teaching a lesson on most child birth related topics when you’ve never experienced it yourself. Awkward, fish out of water type experience. To make matters worse, I had about six pregnant girls and some teen dads starring back at me. I felt like every question made me blush. No matter how much knowledge I had, teenagers have an innate ability to ask just the right questions to make you squirm. However, since I finally joined the “mommy club” last year, I now can confidently share a lesson on breast feeding without feeling like a sham. Enjoy!

Project Brainstorm: Help us Help You! This Month’s Subject: Child Abuse

We are going to pose a topic and ask you to “help us help you” by just sharing one thing you did whether it be an activity, a video clip, infographic, reading, etc. when teaching that topic. We believe everyone will win in the end as you’ll have a new lesson or at least a lot of new ideas and resources to pull from.

Childhood Obesity…The Rest of the Story Activity

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are definitely needed for today’s teens to prepare for the real world and life The rest of the storyon their own or with their future families. What better way to prepare them than to provide them with a real life scenario that needs to be solved. In this activity students are introduced to a problem and must work together as a group to figure out and creatively write and present the “rest of the story”,as the late Paul Harvey would say on his radio broadcasts. The beauty of this activity is that you can create a scenario that needs solved using any crisis type topic. I used childhood obesity, but you can use other important topics such as bullying, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, financial debt, finding quality day care, divorce, dating violence, aging and more. So let the scenarios begin!

Play: The Serious Work of the Child

Adults work hard to find time to play while play comes naturally to children. Through play children learn to function asPlay- unique individuals and discover what is in the world around them. Play is often considered “children’s work” because it’s what they do all day. As children play, they interact with objects in their world. They also respond to the actions of others. Doing and thinking become related, and even though children may not be aware, learning is taking place. These lessons and activities have students investigating more about the value and importance of play in a child’s development.

Child Development Curriculum

Ever want to see what other teachers around the country are using for their curriculum? Here is a very short list of Child Development curriculum. Please feel free to leave a message below or send your school or state’s curriculum guides to
feedback@familyconsumersciences.com to be sponsored on this page. I know it is helpful to reference what others are doing to benchmark top programs.

Infant Development: Reflexes

Reflex actions are part of Jean Piaget’s Sensorimotor period. Babies are born with these instinctive, automatic Infant.Reflexesresponses; some permanent and some temporary. Reflexes are a way that infants learn about and react to the world. This is a lesson that has students learning more about infant reflexes, their stimuli and response using a jigsaw style presentation approach. Sometimes circumstances prevent you from doing an assignment a certain way so I’ve also included an alternate web activity version to gather the information just in case you need a sub-plan or a way for students to make up work. Choose the option that works for you!

Importance of Family TIME

Fact is life is super BUSY for most families!! A lot of families are trying to juggle their time between family and careerdreamstimefree_259444.family.time obligations, household responsibilities and personal needs. Sometimes, as parents, we find it challenging to find balance in this process in order to have precious quality time left over to spend with the important people in our lives. This lesson helps students understand the importance of quality time with little ones by using a variety of illustrations and activities.

Birthday Party Project

There are times throughout the year that I need some “filler” activities due to testing schedules, the loss of seniors partybecause of graduation, etc. I don’t want to give my students free periods so I came up with a practical, creative project of planning a child’s birthday party. Originally this project was designed for my child development class as a team building activity but it could be used in a family unit as well. While this project is just about planning a party and the concepts that go with it, and fit into my time frame, you could easily adapt this project and make it relate to budgeting by giving students price limits or even make it a competition and incorporate a “cupcake wars” style approach. Either way students enjoy planning parties!

#Hashtag Pregnancy Review

Are you looking for a way to learn or review the changes that take place during pregnancy in a creative, concise way? Hashtag.ReviewIf so, this #HashTag pregnancy review/activity is just for you! Tap into the power of social media (Twitter & Facebook) and use #hashtags. Students can summarize or review what they learn about the changes taking place during pregnancy in short, creative phrases. It’s fun to watch and listen as students create their #Hashtag phrases. They also love sharing their creations aloud and by writing them on the SMARTBOARD the next day. This activity will naturally get you coming up with fun, clever hashtag phrases to keep them on task (your students will think you are so COOL and current)!

Trust & Bonding Lesson

Being there for babies and the importance of trust is what this lesson is all about. Bonding is a term that describes a parent’s tie to an infant and typically occurs early in the child’s life. Strong bonds of attachment helps develop…