Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 10/99) - A three-day Early Childhood Education workshop was held in Yellowknife last week.

Educators throughout the North were invited to participate in the free seminar hosted by Aurora College at the Yellowknife Inn.

Workshop organizers Anne Kezier and Wendy Gauthier said the workshop was a great success.

"We had 40 registered and 20 people on the waiting list," Gauthier said. "Judging from the huge turnout, there is a definite need in the North for this training."

Caregivers from Yellowknife, Wha Ti, Fort Smith, Deline came to attend the seminar.

Gauthier said delivery of this education is critical to healthy Northern communities.

"There is currently no access in the North for this type of training," she said. "Our children are our number one natural resource."

The knowledge gained in the early years of life should be enjoyable to children, Gauthier said.

"If it's not fun they won't learn," she said. "Children learn best through play."

ECE consultant, Ann Keizer said the workshop also gives childcare workers an opportunity to learn from each other.

"These educators get together here and return to their home communities with a whole list of people they can turn to for resources," Keizer said.

"When you're out there on your own, you don't have anyone to turn to."

Through the interaction of like-minded educators, Keizer said the helping experience is necessary to developing skills.

"Helping each other -- that's what happens when people get together like this," she said.

"It's needed to grow as a professional."

Day one and two were hosted by Allen Murray, an ECE instructor at the Yukon College. Murray specializes in the area of special-needs children. He says the importance of early education is critical to healthy children.

"We place a lot of emphasis on the importance of the primary caregiver. Be that the mother or the childcare provider," Murray said.

The two fundamentals in educating children comes from food and family, he said.

"Nurturing along with nutrition are the two most important elements in raising happy and healthy children," Murray said.

Babysitting is not what they teach here, Murray said. The relationship between caregivers and children is building a foundation for future growth.

"The quality of the interaction with the primary caregiver is critical to the future development of the child," he said.

This development occurs before children reach the schoolyard, he said.

"By the time a child reaches the age of four years, they will have acquired 60 per cent of their total learning base," he explained.

"By the time they are six, they have acquired 80 per cent of their total knowledge and 80 per cent of their personality is already formed."

"This means that the biggest portion of an education comes from the mother or the primary caregiver -- not from the teacher college professor," Murray added.

The seminar goes on to another sold-out workshop in Inuvik for March 9-11.