Category: Child Development Lessons

Choices & Consequences During Pregnancy

Before teaching my unit on prenatal care, I like to find out what my students already know about the subject. Sometimes aGroup.Discussion.Activity great way to do this is to have an all out brainstorm, discussion type of session prior to getting into individual lesson topics. This activity gets students thinking about the positive and negative consequences of choices that need to be considered while pregnant. Not only does this activity get students thinking, but it allows for them to discuss their ideas as well. The discussions can be in partners, small groups or as a whole class. Students can be given a participation grade based on the oral sharing of their ideas. In order to receive their points, they must share aloud. This gets those shy, quiet students you never hear from involved.

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Super Hero Child Development Lesson

This is a lesson for child development lab where high schoolers can perform this lesson with preschoolers. Have students make their own superhero outfits to wear for this lesson ahead of time. This lesson allows students to find the best qualities in each child and use them to make a child feel special.

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Babysitting Materials

Many middle school Family and Consumer Science courses contain at least one unit in babysitting. Babysitting can be a challenge to teach as the standard is the Red Cross’s course. Here are some helpful resources for teaching baby sitting to your students.

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Fun with Foods: Bento Box Lunches for Kids

When my children were in elementary school they thought it was cool to take their lunches in a fun lunch box. Sometimes I would surprise them with a clever, creative food inside. The memory of this, plus knowing I wanted to teach my child development students about healthy foods choices for children triggered this lesson and project. I assign this as a take home project but this could easily be done in a foods lab or even as a creative competition!

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Guiding Children’s Behavior WORDLE

Most parents and caregivers want well behaved children, but how does that happen? Children need adults not only to discipline but be positive role models, by teaching guiding and supporting them along the way. This lesson helps students determine positive and negative techniques used to guide children’s behavior.

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Reinventing a Fairy Tale

Using an existing fairy tale, students will reinvent it, adapting it to a modern day lifestyle. Characters from another tale can be stolen and brought into their updated tale. The student will be able to conclude how thinking “outside the box” and using imagination can lend itself to the creation of a more appealing story for a child.

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Childhood Vaccinations: Where Do You Stand?

The recent outbreak of measles in Disneyland has sparked a lot of interesting articles, videos and debates about vaccinations. This lesson has students researching both sides of this important issue, looking at the pros and cons of each, and then taking a stand on their position and writing a letter of persuasion to the opposite viewpoint.

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Parenting Styles

Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist, is known for her research on parenting styles. Parenting styles represent approaches to how parents manage their children’s behavior, which in turn influences their development. This lesson explores the four different approaches and used clips from television and movies to test students’ understanding of them.

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Infant Development: Vision

Students are always amazed when I explain to them that infants are born very nearsighted. Normal vision is 20/20 but aBlack.and.White baby is born with 20/200 and 20/400 vision. Over the course of the first year a baby’s vision will improve and they will eventually see things the way everyone else does. This lesson has students independently exploring how sight develops in infants, the role caregivers can play to help stimulate it and finally, culminates with a mobile project fit for an infant!

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Promoting Science Activities with Young Children

Recently I had a student who was hired to babysit young elementary aged children ask me for suggestions of activities she could do with children. She wanted something that was fun, engaging, and would pique their curiosity. We talked about a lot of options that included arts, crafts, cooking and games. Finally after further discussion and investigation, I suggested science related activities that revolved around crafts.

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