ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

"A quality caregiver has to be an excellent detective," observes Dr. Alice Sterling Honig in her new book, The Best for Babies. She continues...

"Adults have to know where a child is in terms of learning the prerequisites for a new skill, such as the wrist-turning ability that allows a child to place a puzzle piece correctly into its hole in the puzzle board. They also have to figure out what will be the optimal or personally more effective ways to support each child's early learning of a new skill. Should a teacher always just wait and watch to see how the child is doing on his own trying to wrestle with a new problem, such as stacking nesting blocks? Jean Piaget, the brilliant Swiss psychologist, affirmed that children must always construct new learning and new understanding on their own through personal experimentation with materials and interactions with  peers. Yet sometimes, if a particular child is easily discouraged at his first tries, a caregiver may decide quietly to provide unobtrusive help. She will support the elbow of that toddler struggling to stack nesting blocks. She will steady the lower blocks so a child can more readily continue to stack the upper blocks as he builds his tower."

The Best for Babies

Caregiver-child interactions are critically important in promoting cognitive, language, and social-emotional learning in young children. With examples and detailed explanations, The Best for Babies illuminates the behaviors and interactions that teachers or care providers should provide for the children in their care. The book offers an easy-to-use checklist to assess each teacher-child interpersonal relationship and the ways caregivers offer learning and living experiences for young children. Teachers and caregivers can use the checklist to grow in their professional expertise and careers as they continue to guide children's learning and well-being. Directors and mentors can use the information gained by using the checklist to help teachers and caregivers optimize the outcomes for each child.

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