Quaker Parenting Project

Learning How to Care for the Meeting’s Children: A Curriculum for First Day School Sixth to Twelfth Graders

by Harriet Heath.

By caring Quakers demonstrate their compassion, their concern for others. This curriculum provides students with an opportunity to think about what it means to care for another. During the classes students have a chance to learn how to care. While the parents of the younger children participate in activities of the meeting, the students care for the young children and, thus, have an actual experience of being responsible for another person, of caring.

In the process students will ask themselves:

  1. 1. What will they, as caregivers, need to know about the children in their care, and how can they obtain this information?
  2. 2. What activities and resources does the environment offer?
  3. 3. What will be their role as caregivers to ensure the safety and happiness of each child?
  4. 4. What do they as caregivers want to learn from this experience?

Contents

Acknowledgments

Caring: An Overview

Organizing the Program

Session 1  Getting Started: A Model of Caring

Session 2  Who Are the Children You Will Care For?
                Where Will You Do It?

Session 3  What Will be Your Role?

Session 4  What Worked? What Didn’t?
                Reflecting on the Childcare Experience

Mini Lesson 1  Brainstorming: A Practice Session

Mini Lesson 2  Dealing with Conflict

Mini Lesson 3  Dealing with Meanness

Mini Lesson 4  Reading to Children

Mini Lesson 5  Talking with Children

Mini Lesson 6  Temperament Patterns

Mini Lesson 7  Caring as Part of a Quaker Way of Life

Figures

Figure 1 Caring: A Process

Figure 2 A Caregiving Experience: An Example

Figure 3 Sign-In/Sign-Out Chart

Figure 4 Caring for Children: A Process

Figure 5 Questions to Ask Parents

Figure 6 Three Reports of the Same Afternoon

Figure 7 Questions that Guide: The Observation Process

Figure 8 Example of a Developmental Chart

Figure 9 Example of a Plan for Caring for Young Children

Figure 10 Brainstorming: A Skill

Figure 11 Temperament Patterns

Close