Audience & Goals

This course is designed to meet the educational needs of students in grades 9-12.

Goals:

From the moment of conception, a child's life is impacted by the environment around it. This environment includes nutritional, emotional, and physical well-being. In this class, you will have the opportunity to experience the joy, committment, responsibility, and understanding needed to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. You will learn to recognize developmental abilities and stages in young children, to relate child development theory and research to real-life situations, to understand birth defects and their causes and care, and to have a better understanding of decisions concerning parenting and lifestyles.

You will learn the pathways of whole health from conception to two years of age, and follow these pathways through these years. You will also be able to understand the skills needed to raise children who will become responsible, caring adults.

It is helpful if you have a good working knowledge of your computer and the skills to work through this course. It is not required that you have previous experience with children, but there are areas of this course that will ask you to observe parent-child interaction and evaluate. Personal experiences with young children also greatly enhance your essay assignments.