Day Care

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In day care, there will be at least 10 classrooms in order to organize the children appropriately. For pre-school years will be located at first floor, such as 3 years old to 4 years old will be in the first classroom and followed by 5 years old to 6 years old will be in the second classroom. Each classroom is designed with soft flooring and painted drywall. However, for elementary-school years will be located at second floor, children aged 7 to 12 years old have their own classroom respectively. These two floors have two extra classrooms for other purposes (refers to appendix A as sample). Each classroom must be able to accommodate 10 to 15 children.

Moreover, there will be a library at third floor of day care. It is to improve the children’s reading skill and to develop culture of reading. A comfy place should be provided for sitting down to read and create a warm and welcoming reading area (refers to appendix B as sample).

There will also be a playground facility and mini pool (refers to appendix C as sample). The space of play area must be sufficient to avoid overcrowded and also the multimedia facilities must be in good condition. It is important to allow children have both indoor and outdoor activities in day care. This will enable them to learn social interaction and to improve physical development.

In addition, the amount of workers must be sufficient enough to handle a day care. The minimum amount of caretakers should be about 16 caretakers. However, the right amounts of children for the 15 caretakers to take care of are in the range of 10 to 15 children for each of the age group. 2 caretakers will be assigned for each of the age group and take care of them during learning session.

Administrator also referred to as centre director, which is responsible for managing the centre, supervising the teaching staff and communicating with parents. The director may also assume a teaching role for part of the day.

The director is also involved in the hiring and performance reviews of staff members. He/she makes every effort to hire trained staff and support staff training opportunities. Staff training and qualification are essential to enhance staff members’ ability to work with children. This demonstrates that college level coursework in day care and education has been shown to have measurable, positive effects on the quality of day care. For example, the director participates in at least 24 hours of professional development in early childhood education each year in order to learn new skills and enhance existing skills. The director encourages all staff to participate in professional development to improve the potential of staff members in teaching.

Malaysia is a multicultural and ethnic country. Thus, the day care follows the 1 Malaysia systems, where all children no matter what race or religion they are, will be welcome. It can be a good exposure for children to experience different culture of their peers at a younger age and also to learn patriotism.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES IN DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTRE

The children usually stay in the day care centre during weekdays after they finish their classes at school, and will be taking care by the caregivers as their parents are occupy with their work. Hence, the caregivers play an important role in giving care to the children as children spending more time with these caregivers more than with their parents. After the children are sent back to home safely, parents will also keep tracts on the progression of children’s academic as well as the activities that they are having in the day care. This is to ensure that the development of these children in terms of cognitive, social and emotional are encourage in good and proper ways, as well as shaping a good form of behavior in each and every children in the day care. Through the study of Psychology and application of Psychological knowledge, it may gives us the advantages and good understanding in helping and support the children.

In order to manage a day care efficiently, we believe that besides focusing on the academic aspect we will look into their talents and abilities, as it plays essential role in their life, thus Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory is suitable and fit with this statement. The theory of Multiple Intelligences is founded by a Harvard University Professor named Howard Gardner, in 1983, where he defines multiples intelligence as a set of talents, skills or abilities that possess by all individual, depends on whether it is in greater or lesser extent. According to Gardner’s theory, he had identified eight different kinds of intelligence and proposed that each individual is unique from the level of their abilities and how they apply these intelligences in combination. The seven types of intelligence can be known in below:

- Linguistic intelligence involves the sensitivity in written language and the usage of language to express and understand complex meanings, the ability in learning languages as well as the order of the words, their pronunciation, rhythms and inflections. This intelligence provides us the skills such as reading, writing and speaking in order to express one rhetorically or poetically in an effective way. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are those who possess high linguistic intelligence.

- Logical-mathematical intelligence helps us to understand more about the relationship among actions, objects or ideas and think of the causes and effects. Those who high in this intelligence are able to calculate, consider proportions and perform complex mathematical and logical operations. Plus, this intelligence is often associated with scientific as well, since it requires the inductive and deductive reasoning skills, critical and creative problem solving.

- Musical intelligence consist the capacity to recognize, create and compose pitches, tones and rhythms by using an instrument or voice. Those who possess high in musical intelligence such as musicians and singers, are more aware of and sensitive to music, tunes and melody, hence they are skilled and experience in playing a musical instrument or having a good voice for singing in tune.

- Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence focuses on the physical skills which allow our whole body to move for physical activities such as balancing, coordination, and sports. It requires a good sense of timing, coordination expressive and rhythmic in order to perform dancing and acting, as well as using hands with mastery and skill for detailed activities and small work. Dancers and actors are those who are high in this intelligence.

- Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand the intentions, motivations, desires and feelings of other people. They have empathy