Outcome 3.3

 "States the strengths & possible limits of your own ability to observe & offer literacy & numeracy experiences with children less than 4 years of age."

My experience so far in my educating career has been with children four years and over. I am currently placed at a Kindergarten working with four and five year olds and I work at an Out of School Hours Care (five to twelve year olds). I have a number of second cousins in the less than four years age bracket, however, due to busy lives and the size of my family I do not see these children often. Therefore, my experience with children four years and under is limited. Additionally, my awareness of literacy and numeracy has grown considerably just in the first three to four week of this topic as my understanding and awareness of children’s literacy and numeracy was less than significant before this semester. Thus, in regards to my ‘strengths and possible limits of my ability to observe and offer literacy and numeracy experiences with children less than four years of age’ my limits are greater than my strengths. I have a number of ideas relating to my potential future career, including working special needs children, some day working with older teenagers in a mentor role, working in kindergartens, and working in early primary school years, however, I have no plans at the moment to work in childcares or with pre-kindergarten age children. Still, expanding my knowledge and observations in literacy and numeracy in these children is something I need to focus on. Just because I have no plans to work with these children does not mean I should ignore what they are capable of as an understanding of where children are coming from into my classroom or kindergarten is important. 

To do this during this topic I should focus more of my readings on experiences, studies, and observations on children younger than four.  Reading about, discussing, and focusing on the literacy and numeracy capabilities of these younger children will give me the foundation for observing and offering experiences with children. It will also give me a greater understanding of where children aged above four have come from and what they have learned, or should have learned. Understanding this will allow me to better help those children (over four) who perhaps do not have the expected capabilities and who might need to revisit literacy and numeracy understandings they learned when they were younger. Using the readings and discussion times (both on this blog and in class) during this topic will help me to achieve a greater understanding of the literacy and numeracy capabilities of children less than four years of age, and thus, expand on the foundations of my abilities to observe and offer experiences to these children.

However, I have expanded on my knowledge of literacy in children less than four already during this topic, by analysing weekly readings. During the first week of the topic, week five, I read and analysed a speech by Mem Fox who argued the importance of reading to children from birth to school. Stressing the importance of reading to children often before kindergarten and school age to help develop their knowledge of literacy, gave me a greater understanding of how important reading to young children is. Additionally, the reading analysed in week six showed me that the development of literacy is not always necessarily something that is done through typical literacy related activities. Developing literacy capabilities can happen through multiple types of everyday play activities as well. 

Future readings should include more practical examples of numeracy experiences in children less than four.