This study aims to demonstrate what changes occurred amongst students after they had participated in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in home economics classes. A questionnaire was issued to454 subjects (187 junior high and 267 senior high school students) to compare the following scores before and after child development education classes including ECEC. The scores of the “interest in children”, the “images of children”, the “knowledge of child development” and the “sympathetic responsiveness to children” increased. There was a substantial increase in the “sympathetic responsiveness to young children”score, which was associated with an increase in the three other areas.This association indicates that it is important for the students to have an adequate level of competence in understanding and responding to children’s demands and emotional expression. Junior high school boys had the lowest score among the four student groups, but a significant increase was observed in the “interest in children” score-the door to child development education--as well as “knowledge of child development”, suggesting child development education provided in home economics education is effective for all students.

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We manufactured Western-style persimmon jelly-like confectionery, using soy milk and persimmon paste, to examine the characteristics of Western-style persimmon confectionery prepared from local ingredients, and to make use of the reactivity between soluble persimmon tannin and protein materials. The soy milk was combined with astringent persimmon paste or persimmon paste from which the astringency had been removed. The taste, quality, physical properties, and soluble tannin contents of the two types of confectionery were compared. The confectionery prepared with non-astringent persimmon paste showed an unappealing color and poor texture, whereas that prepared with the astringent paste showed a good color, good texture, and good sensory evaluation. In addition, the confectionery prepared with astringent persimmon paste showed no syneresis (liquid separation from the gel), which is a problem for this type of product. These results suggest that mixing astringent persimmon paste with soy milk would make it possible to manufacture high-quality Western-style persimmon confectionery.

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This study aims to investigate the type of care provided by mothers for their three-year-old children on a daily basis and elucidate their feelings toward their children as the latter join and settle into kindergarten.The following results were obtained: (1) Scores of child care behavior decreased after their children’s admission to kindergarten, but those of mothers’ companionship with their children showed no consistent tendency. (2) Mothers of children who speak about their friends and teachers and do the same thing as they did in the kindergarten that day at home, do not worry about their children not being able to make friends or of disobeying their teachers. (3) Mothers who worried about their child’s adjustment to kindergarten and felt lonely throughout the six-month study period were first-time mothers.

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