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Challenges
The caregiver must take extra safety precautions when there are infants or toddlers in care.
It may difficult to find snack items that are appropriate for all age groups.
Planning structured activities is difficult when there are children with various ablility levels and interests.
Daily routines such as nap or meal times may need to be more flexible to accomodate different aged children.
Older children may prefer same age peers and resent the younger child in a play group.
Benefits
Multi-age groups offer children opportunities to develop and practice social skills.
There is a wider range of behavior and performance that is likely to be accepted and tolerated by the adults as well as by the children themselves.
There is often less competitive and more cooperative or helpful behaviors.
Mixed-age group care is more like a home setting and often a more comfortable and secure setting for young children.
Siblings are not separated.
By design, mixed-age group care is geared more to the needs of individuals. Children in such groups have greater freedom to develop at their own rate.
Older children learn to adapt their language and social skills to relate with younger children, often learning patience, compassion and problem solving skills.
Younger children are challenged by older children and often engage in more complex activities then when they play with same age peers.
Analyse: consider it in detail - so you write up the difficulties in depth and their possible impact on children and the caregiver. You could also add benefits if you wanted to go in to more detail and evaluate.
Difficulties in caring for mixed ages
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