Educationists support early childhood education
NAN-H-32
Childhood
By Uche Bibilari
Abuja, Oct. 16, 2017(NAN) Experts in the education sector on Monday advised parents to ensure that their children enrolled early in school to enable them to perform better academically.
They gave the advice in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
The Acting Director, Early Childhood Care Education, Bayelsa SUBEB, Mrs Ibubekye Etunghe, said that children who passed through early childhood care perform better in primary school than their counterparts who do not.
“Children who engage in early childhood care are always excellent in their studies and they perform very well when it comes to their academic.
“Parents are seriously advised to make sure that they enroll their children early for childhood education because it is important.’’
Etunghe also said that children from zero to five years old need enough playing materials to stimulate their interest in learning.
She added that playing materials for children were educative equipment for children to learn.
“Children’s major way of learning is through playing, so playing equipment is their priority; every early childhood centre must have playing materials to stimulate learning so that the children will learn better.
“For a child to grow well, the environment and the child’s nutrition also matter a lot.
“ The children’s right must be protected in any environment and they should have balanced diet to enable them grow better and be useful citizens in the society,’’ she said.
Sharing similar sentiments, Mrs Bose Adeyemi, Department of Early Childhood Care and Primary Education, Aminu College of Education, Azeri Bauchi State, said that children learned better if the environment was friendly.
“We are trying to encourage people to move away from the conventional root learning of ABCD, 123, 1+1; we believe that children learn better if the environment is friendly.
“We also need to look at the issue of love, children needs love. They need stimulation in order to perform well,’’ Adeyemi noted.
She said that everything within the child’s environment should be instructional materials, saying that there was need to put so many things in the children’s environment to enable them learn faster.
According to her, stimulation is not only in terms of providing them with playing materials, but for somebody to be close to them, guard, guide and show them love.
“They are human beings they have feelings, so we should discourage this issue of flogging children, insulting and calling them dull; we don’t have anything like a dull child.
“We believe that children start learning from birth, because when you give birth to a child the child sucks the breast that means that there is a kind of intelligence.
“The child knows that he should do such things and then as we encourage him by stimulating him you see that he will continue to adapt and learn.
“There are different developmental stages and in every stage you see that the child will do what he is supposed to do; when he is hungry he knows how to express it when he is pressed he knows too.
“So as soon as you give birth to a child he or she will start learning though you may not take him to school.’’ she added.
She stressed that all children needed encouragement to achieve and make it in life, adding that parents, teachers and the whole community needed to be enlightened in terms of child upbringing. (NAN)
UU/JIN/CHOM/AFA
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Edited By Chioma Ugboma/Felix Ajide