In Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs, by Sue Bredekamp, Carol Copple, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the authors tell us that “Practitioners of DAP promote the health and development of the whole child, not just the aspects measured on the standardized tests.” 

The Way I See It – To promote the development of a “whole child” we look at using DAP in the three basic areas of learning and development. I call them Body, Mind, and Spirit. Body encompasses the skill and concept areas of Health, Gross Motor, and Fine Motor. 

Here are some ways to assure DAP for the Body:

Health & Hygiene

• Use food, nutrition education, and cooking as planned curricular experiences, but NEVER use food as a reward or punishment.
• Offer opportunities, materials, and time for children to practice dressing and toileting by themselves. Be Patient!
• Assure that health standards are met and that children and adults wash hands frequently during the school day (at arrival, before and after eating, after returning from outdoors, after messy activities, after use of the bathroom, or diaper change and after a hand-involved cough or sneeze).  
• NEVER force toilet training!

“One day you’re a superstar because you pooped in the toilet like a big boy, and the next day you’re sitting in the principal’s office because you said the word “poopy” in American History class (which, if you ask me, is the perfect place to say that word).”                                                                                                                         -Dav Pilkey (“Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People”)

Gross Motor

• Offer planned daily experiences for the development of gross motor strengths including opportunities for children to move their bodies in a variety of safe ways generally and specifically. 
• Create an environment with spaces in which gross motor movement can be safely performed and continually and firmly stress the need for safe gross motor movement.
• Mandate strict regulations and procedures for keeping children healthy, well fed, and safe, and be firm with all staff and all parents in maintaining them.
• All adults must follow regulations concerning fire and weather evacuation drills, first aid and emergency procedures, take First Aid and CPR courses and be certified to carry out these procedures.
• All teachers should be “gross motoring” with children, not sitting on the playground benches to watch.   

 “If a child comes into your program alive in the morning, send him home the same way.”                                                                                                                     -Anne Bensinger

Fine Motor

• Equip the classroom with soft, hard, and stackable blocks, interlocking toys, building sets with a variety of textures, beads, laces, pegs and boards, snap blocks, links, nuts, bolts, hardware tools, keys and locks, puzzles of kinds, woodworking equipment when age appropriate, sand/water table materials, and tools for all types of expression (art, writing, musical instruments, cooking utensils, role play props). Use lots of what the Reggio Emilia curriculum calls “loose parts”.
• Create an environment which values the use of writing and encourages the desire to write without pressure or developmentally inappropriate measures and devices such as dittos and worksheets.
• Create and maintain an atmosphere of respect for every effort to write Offer formal opportunities for writing for individual children who have shown an interest in and a readiness for these activities.
• NEVER force right or left-handedness on any child.                                                          
• Do not shy away from giving the children practice in using REAL adult-size tools and objects.  Keep safety and developmental stages in mind.

“Don’t rule out working with your hands. It doesn’t preclude using your head.”      

                                                                                                                                      –Andy Rooney

Next Blog: DAP for the Mind – Intelligence