Reflective Letter

This unit has made a huge impact on me. I began not knowing how to create a website and without having alot of technical knowledge, this has also been a ch allege for me. My group members are a huge help when I have a question, thank you all for your help, I appreciate it. I also had a slow start with my service learning agency, as they sent my email regarding start time somewhere else apparently.

When I first entered this class, I knew about Head Start, But not all of the miscellaneous ins and outs of the program. As you can see in my website, http://play-basedlearning.weebly.com/, extensive research has enabled me to better understand Head Start and how they strive to meet today's and tomorrow's needs. Head Start continues to be the best they can be and always trying to better themselves. With continued budget concerns and many more poor than we have seen in many of our lifetimes, Head Start may start to experience problems serving everyone.

I have conducted research on my topic, play learning, completed the majority of my service learning and enjoyed it, and created a website. Also, I will continue with my service learning beyond the required 15 hours required, by this class. I enjoy working with the children at Head Start. I feel good each time I walk out to my car after finishing another week with Head Start, that I have done something for other people and helped them in someway. It is a self-gratifying feeling while helping other people. In the future I will volunteer in someway to give my time to my community, because of the things that I have learned in my English 102 class at Boise State University.

Since starting my service learning, I have learned the way that the individual teachers handle the classroom and implemented this when I work with the Head Start children. The teachers are incredible, so thoughtful and caring, and always positive. The children almost always do as they are asked. While at Head Start, I have noticed a lot of activity but everyone has a job to do and the children take this very seriously. Yes, they are very young still, but each one can serve themselves at lunch time and pour their own drink mostly without spilling. If there is a spill the child must clean it. And, everyone helps at clean up time. There are no favorites with these children they are all treated equally.

There is alot of play learning being done. Each child gets to choose from a list of activities, then they all get busy learning. The children do not realize they are learning, but they are. Last Wednesday, I was helping some boys build gears. They learned what worked, what didn't work and why. Each one was having fun and helping each other. When one child was needing help often times another child was right there to help him. This was absolutely wonderful to see, the children are so thoughtful and caring with each other.

Sometime during the middle of my research, I was considering changing the focus of my topic. My research became scattered and I started to loose focus and lost sight of the end result. This in turn steered me back to my original focus play-learning. Play-learning is very fascinating because this is the way nature had intended the young to learn. It is all about trial and error in a safe environment and around safe nurturers. Young from the time they can move around begin to play, and learn while playing. Only one of my sources disagreed slightly with play-learning. This source said it was difficult for children who started preschool in a play-learning environment to transition to a traditional setting. Therefore, insisted a transition time period is needed. All other studies have so far indicated that play-learning for all children is best for learning, well-being and health.

Many children must sit for up to six hours a day at school. Then they go home and sit in front of a computer or television set all evening. This is why I came back to the topic play-learning, it is very important for children to have play-learning as part of their curriculum in the early years.