Dear Learner It gives us a great pleasure to welcome you to this module: promote healthy development in ECD programmes. This module is intended for people who wish to implement comprehensive safety and health policies in a holistic, inclusive and developmentally appropriate way in association with families and the wider community. For you to build skills and share our enthusiasm for this field of study, we urge you to read this overview several times so that studying becomes easier. As an adult learner, you are responsible for your own learning. Make sure you prepare yourself before each session. This learner guide is designed in such a way that it gives knowledge to anyone who reads it. This book serves as your guide. It contains information and guidelines that you can use to develop further. The purpose of this course is to build people who are required to implement comprehensive safety and health policies in a holistic, inclusive and developmentally appropriate way in association with families and the wider community.

Dear Learner Please note that although your formative assessment is online, you are still required to complete the Portfolio of Evidence (PoE) document below and to send it to Ukhanyiso Ebantwini NPC as part of the assessment process. There is an additional cost of R500 excluding VAT for the summative assessment. A facilitator will contact you after you have completed your online formative assessment. He or she will assist you in preparing for the summative assessment and go through this PoE with you. If there are any questions or concerns about the PoE or the summative assessment please contact info@educationaltraining.co.za Good luck! Warm regards The Ukhanyiso Ebantwini Team

Early childhood professionals promote physical and mental health and appropriate nutrition and provide an emotionally and physically safe environment for young children in partnership with their families. Sound health, safety, and nutritional practices provide the foundation for development and learning. Good nutrition is critical to overall development of young children. Meals and snacks encourage good nutrition and eating habits. A safe environment prevents and reduces injuries for young children who are only beginning to recognise dangerous situations. A prime consideration of early childhood development interventions is to keep children safe all the time. Promoting safety for all children is a responsibility for all early childhood development practitioners and care givers. Care means assessing the safety of the environment, providing family teaching and making provisions for emergencies.

Proper nutrition influences brain development, behaviour, and attention span, and it plays a major role in whether a child is at increased risk of obesity, asthma, heart disease, impotence, cancer, blindness, memory loss, and other later-in-life health problems. Learning about healthy lifestyles contributes to children’s sense of wellbeing and builds their confidence in themselves. Adults can help children learn about healthy eating, hygiene and how to keep fit and active. As children become more independent, they can take greater responsibility for their own health, safety and wellbeing. In practice, good nutrition means putting dietary emphasis on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, poultry, lean meats, and low-fat dairy foods to ensure the body has a steady and adequate supply of the nutrients it needs. It also means managing calorie intake (and expenditure through physical activity) to maintain a healthy weight.

It is universally recognised that the main objective of any education system in a democratic society is to provide quality education for all learners so that they will be able to reach their full potential and will be able to meaningfully contribute to and participate in that society throughout their lives. The responsibility of the education system to develop and sustain such learning is premised on the recognition that education is a fundamental right which extends equally to all learners. Exercising this responsibility involves ensuring that the education system creates equal opportunities for effective learning by all learners. The impact on children`s well-being and development of socio-economic factors (poverty, unemployment, disempowerment), crime and violence, both communal and domestic, substance abuse and addiction should be taken into consideration in helping children develop holistically and acquire the life skills to cope with abuse, violence or stressful home situations. Children who have physical, sensory or intellectual disabilities can experience many difficulties in learning and participating in community life. ECD practitioners should therefore assist children to develop holistically. This will all be explored in this study unit.

Social-emotional development provides the foundation for how we feel about ourselves and how we experience others. This foundation begins the day we are born and continues to develop throughout our lifespan. The greatest influence on a child’s social- emotional development is the quality of the relationships that he develops with his primary caregivers. Positive and nurturing early experiences and relationships have a significant impact on a child’s social-emotional development. They also influence how the young child’s brain develops. An attachment relationship is an enduring one that develops during the first few years of the child’s life. It is built upon repeated interactions between the infant and the primary caregiver. These interactions mainly involve attempts by the infant to achieve physical and emotional closeness and the caregiver’s responses to these attempts. They have a lasting influence on how the child feels about himself, how he thinks and interacts with his world, and what he comes to expect from others. How do children start to understand who they are, what they are feeling, what they expect to receive from others? These concepts are at the heart of their social-emotional wellness. They contribute to a child’s self-confidence and empathy, her ability to develop meaningful and lasting. friendships and partnerships, and her sense of importance and value to those around her. Children’s social-emotional development influences all other areas of development: Cognitive, motor, and language development are all greatly affected by how a child feels about herself and how she can express ideas and emotions. Professionals sometimes define healthy social-emotional development in young children as early childhood mental health. Healthy social-emotional development includes the ability to: • Form and sustain positive relationships. • Experience, manage, and express emotions. • Explore and engage with the environment. Children with well-developed social-emotional skills are also more able to: • Express their ideas and feelings. • Display empathy towards others. • Manage their feelings of frustration and disappointment more easily. • Feel self-confident. • More easily make and develop friendships. • Succeed in school.

Guiding children’s behaviour is an important aspect of educating and caring for children. Positive strategies need to be developed to assist children to learn appropriate ways of behaving. The term ‘behaviour guidance” is used to reflect current thinking about the most positive and effective ways to help children gain understanding and learn skills that will help them to manage their own behaviour. Corporal punishment and unreasonable discipline are not permitted in education and care services, not only because the child may be physically harmed, but also because it nearly always has detrimental effects on the child’s self-esteem and feelings of security and belonging. All education and care services must: • take reasonable steps to ensure that education and care is provided to children in a way that gives each child positive guidance and encouragement toward acceptable behaviour. • have a policy and procedures about interactions with children that includes procedures to ensure education and care is provided in a way that: o gives each child positive guidance and encouragement toward acceptable behaviour and encourage children to express themselves and their opinions. o allows the children to undertake experiences that develop self-reliance and self-esteem. o always maintains the dignity and rights of each child. o has regard to the family and cultural values, age, and physical and intellectual development and abilities of each child being educated and cared for by the service. o children being educated and cared for by the service have opportunities to interact and develop respectful and positive relationships with each other and with staff members and volunteers. o considers the size and the composition of the groups in which children are being educated and cared for.