Tag: Early Childhood Education

Labelling Body and Facial Expressions

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

Labelling Emotions

Children use body and facial expressions to reflect their emotions. By the same token, children need to interpret body and facial expressions as part of their emotional development.

Children who cannot express their needs could get frustrated or miss out on engaging in activities with other children. One example is a child who is too shy to ask peers to play with them. Another example is a child who is trying to get a toy or a game from someone else. In both examples, children need to be able to express what they want and understand the feedback of other children whether verbal or non-verbal.

Role of educators:

How can educators help children enrich their emotional vocabulary and enhance their communication skills in order to successfully negotiate what they want?

Educators need to provide activities that help children recognise emotions such as anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, and frustration in themselves and other children. A child who can recognise the intentions of other children by correctly reading their emotional expressions will have a better chance of being included in any setting.

Expressing and interpreting emotions are pathways to emotional regulation and successful socialisation.

Building a vocabulary of emotions from simple to complex ones is part of children’s socio-emotional development. According to Plutchik’s wheel of emotions (Six Seconds, n.d.), the basic emotions are joy, disgust, anger, and anticipation, and their opposites are sadness, trust, fear, and surprise respectively. The combination of two basic emotions brings up a new emotion.

Children need concrete activities to interpret and label emotions. Educators could teach children how to recognise the affective states of other children by looking for their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

A simple activity of having a face with a printed emotional label could be a starting point.

Reading children’s books to children can contribute to their understanding of affective states. Often, in children’s books, the plot revolves around an issue that triggers an affective state and how to resolve the issue.

Games could be used as well. One example is asking children to play musical chairs. On each chair, there is a card of a facial expression flipped face down. When the music stops and the children sit down, they are asked to turn the card over and explain what emotion the face is expressing. They are also asked to make the same face. The children are then asked to go for a second round and repeat the process and so on. This allows the children to experiment with facial expressions in a non-threatening environment. More complex emotions could be introduced as children learn the basic ones.

The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development (n.d.) proposed other ideas. The educator could:

  • Provide activities that help children label their emotions. For example, they could look at the mirror and make faces and then try to label the emotion.
  • Read a book to the children and ask them to guess how the child is feeling based on the text or based on the illustrations.
  • Ask children during “show and tell” to make a facial or a body expression about how the activity they are sharing made them feel.
  • Assist children in making up a song about activities or actions that make them feel happy, sad, angry, surprised, and so on. The words of a familiar song could be adapted.
  • Provide props for children to role-play different experiences in the dramatic area. An example is going to see the doctor and trying to act the experience out.
  • Prepare cards of activities and facial expressions and ask children to pair the activity with the facial emotion it brings in them.
  • Play a game with children where one child chooses a card that has an expressed facial emotion and imitates that emotion. The other children must guess the emotion.
  • Prompt children to come up with a solution for a child who is sad, angry, or unhappy about an event through problem-solving.

Why are interpreting and labelling emotions useful?

Joseph and Strain (2003) elaborated on the process. When children recognise and label their feelings, they develop emotional regulation and when they recognise and label other people’s emotions, they strengthen their problem-solving skills. The process then assists the children to come up with solutions acceptable to themselves and other parties thus generating a win-win outcome.

The educators could easily share the information with parents. Both parents and educators could scaffold children as they navigate the emotional realm around them. A synchronized process would support children as they grow up in a global world.

References:

Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. (n.d.). Ideas for teaching about emotions. https://www.ecmhc.org/ideas/emotions.html  

Six Seconds. (n.d.). Plutchik’s wheel of emotions: Exploring the emotion wheel. https://www.6seconds.org/2022/03/13/plutchik-wheel-emotions/

Joseph, G. E., & Strain, P. S. (2003). Enhancing emotional vocabulary in young children. Young Exceptional Children, 6(4), 18-26.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/109625060300600403

Development
Future Global Children

What does it mean for children to feel different?

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

When do children notice that they are different from other children? Is it when they see someone wearing something they would like to wear? Is it when they see someone playing with a toy they would like to have? Is it when they see the educator being very attentive to a parent that is not theirs? Is it when they see someone eating something they would like to have? Is it when they learned colours and realised that their skin colour is different than the skin of other children?

Children learn to make judgments about who they are at a very young age. They have also developed ideas about others around them.

The Doll Test:

As an example, the “Doll Test” examined children’s attitudes towards race and found that most children are aware of racial stereotypes. The Doll Test is available at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpUyB2xgTM

The Adults’ Role:

Children need support as they are making sense of their social environment. Parents and educators are expected to initiate those discussions. So, when is the appropriate time for adults to discuss development including race and non-race-related social development with children?

One study examined the developmental readiness of children to understand behaviours and traits and compared the scientific findings with the estimates that adults thought were appropriate times to approach those topics with children.

Specifically, the study examined participants’ estimates of the age at which children develop race-related awareness, non-race related social development, and non-social development. The participants were also asked when they would start discussing race with children. Participants were from the USA and half of them were parents. The results were compared to the ages children were scientifically found to start developing those types of awareness.

Developmental Findings:

Developmentally speaking, children are able to:

  1. Prefer people based on their race by three months of age.
  2. Categorise faces based on race from 9 months.
  3. Associate face colour (or race) with positive or negative traits based on the messages they receive from their environment by the third year of age.
  4. Associate racial groups with wealth or power by the fourth year of age.   

The Educator’s Role:

What should the educator pay attention to in a classroom especially when it comes to children who are different or who are minority?

Educators should start by questioning their own values and beliefs about how children learn and their role in ensuring children’s future success.

Educators need to implement a curriculum that allows for equitable opportunities with no bias.

For additional information, please refer to the following article and related supplement:

Sullivan, J., Wilton, L., & Apfelbaum, E. P. (2020, August 6). Adults delay conversations about race because they underestimate children’s processing of race. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000851

Inclusive Education
Future Global Children Homepage

How to help a child sleep better?

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

People go through 4 to 5 cycles of sleep per night with each cycle extending from 75 to 90 minutes. The cycle includes two main states, the Non Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) state and the REM sleep. The REM sleep is the last stage in the cycle and it is the stage where we dream.

It is important to go through REM and NREM to get the full benefits of sleep. Those include better memory, increased creative thinking abilities, and enhanced pathways between the left and right sides of the brain.

When we sleep, the body evaluates the information acquired during the day and decides what to keep for later use and what to discard. Storing the information in long term memory allows us to build on this experience to better sort out related issues. The process itself strengthens the neural connections in the brain.

What goes on before sleep plays a role in sorting out problems as well. One study found that thinking about a question before going to be induced dreams regarding the issue for half the participants and solutions for a quarter of them.

Sleepiness builds up during the day and is released when we sleep. If we don’t get enough sleep, we feel unable to make decisions that require a lot of focus. We are also prone to making mistakes in judgment due to a lack of full attention.

It is important to maintain consistent sleep routines, avoid using the computer the last hour before sleep, have the last heavy meal for the day at least 3 hours before sleep, and sleep in a dark and cool room.

Some children have issues going to bed and keep waking up through the night. The attached video covers states of sleep and factors related to sleep problems including if the child is a morning or an evening person. The video also includes ideas on what parents and educators could do to help the child sleep better.

For additional information, refer to:

Karman, M. (2023, July 15). How sleep improves and impairs creative thinking. Eachnight. https://eachnight.com/sleep/sleep-improves-impairs-creative-thinking/ .

Rethinking the NO in Guiding Children’s Behaviour

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever asked yourself as a parent or as an educator why do you say NO when a child asks for something?

Rethinking the NO brings us to a journey inside ourselves where we need to be clear about our beliefs, values, and daily responses.

Firstly, with regards to beliefs, we need to consider the following: If we believe that children need guidance all the way through and that they are not able to take good decisions, this will make us react differently to children’s requests than if we believe that children want guidance to make the right decision themselves.

Giving guidance highlights that children have needs that they like to see fulfilled and are happy to learn from the people around them so there is a win win situation between the adult and the child.

A belief that children learn when adults enforce strong rules early on in life triggers a strict and firm response from the adult with little room for flexibility. The emphasis is on exerting an effort to prevent the child being spoiled.

What are your beliefs as a parent or as an educator?

Secondly, what are our values?

If we value respect from the child to the parent by all means, we don’t mind if the child fears us. We should be controlling and demand respect from the child regardless even if the respect is not in the child’s best interest.

On the other hand, if we value the rights of children to meet their needs, we respect this right and guide them towards fulfilling their needs in socially acceptable manner even if that means that the child could grow up different than us, the parent or the educator, and could be interested in different activities.

We have to be careful when we ask children to comply with our demands without any consideration for their opinion. This teaches them that the strong person should be followed and they could later follow an abuser out of fear and of a need to belong.

We want to gradually give the children control over their decisions and to release our power. More importantly, we want to be compassionate towards children. They make mistakes but that does not mean that they have evil intentions.

The ideal practice is to acknowledge the behaviour or misbehaviour that children engage in without defining the personality of the child based on that behaviour. We need to accept that children need to learn how to present their beliefs, values, and practices, and that there will be many attempts along the way prior to working out what conveys the need and the message and what doesn’t.

We want children to have a bank of constructive activities and behaviours instead of constantly reminding them of what is not working.

That is how we can help children grow into successful global citizens ready to explore and contribute to the future of humanity.

For further reading, refer to:

Porter, L. (2016). Guiding children’s behaviours. In M. Ebbeck, & M. Maniganayake (Eds.), Play in early childhood education: Learning in diverse contexts (2nd ed., pp. 161-182). Oxford University Press.

How can educators help children cope with stress?

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

Children can get stressed for many reasons. Early childhood settings have an important role to play in alleviating children’s stress.

Firstly, a quality early childhood program provides children with:

  • A balanced environment with vigorous and quiet activities,
  • An engaging curriculum that addresses the needs of the individual children, and
  • Qualified staff members that act in consistent and predictable ways.

Secondly, adults should interact with stressed children and help them develop coping skills. When a child is angry or upset, it is important for the educator to acknowledge the child’s feelings and to allow the child time to process the negative emotions. The child should not be asked to get going with daily activities without having worked through the stressful issues.

Educators need to say something that they think captures the child’s feelings. They need to get down to the child’s level, have eye to eye contact with the child and, for example, say: “I understand that you are upset because of ….”.

It is important to state what the issue could be especially if the child is not the verbal type. The educator should give the child time to calm down and then take one of two approaches: either ask the child to come up with the next step depending on the age and maturity of the child; or, suggest couple options that the child can do to overcome the stress.

Sometimes holding children gently helps them calm down; at other times, children need to be left alone while being supervised. They could read a book or listen to some music.

If children can verbalize feelings, they should be given the time to do so. The educator acknowledges the feelings and helps the child move to the next step on how to cope with the situation.

Thirdly, the educator can help children deal with their emotions by sharing children’s literature that focused on the same stressful issues. There are children’s books that cover the issues of loss and death, diverse families, fears, illness, and hospitalization.

There are many advantages to using children’s books. Children become aware of other children who are going through the same situation and how they navigated the associated stress. It is also useful for all children to learn about difficult life issues through children’s books even if they’re not going through it themselves so they will be equipped to cope when such time comes. In addition, the awareness of stressful issues though literature helps children develop empathy towards children going through tough times.

Fourthly, children can be encouraged to relax. Simple exercises could involve asking the children to tense each muscle then relax it. Another technique could be the use of imagery. For example, children could pretend they are leaves falling from a tree.

Lastly, role play and sociodramatic play offer valuable venues for children to express their feelings and relive their fears and anxieties in a healthy manner. Children often repeat the same scenarios until they are ready to overcome them.

The sooner children learn how to cope with stress, the more prepared they will be to navigate through complex issues as they grow up in a global world.

Reference:

Essa, E. L. (2014). Introduction to early childhood education (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

HOME

The Development of Grammar in Young Children

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

Once children learn few words, they start to use those words to communicate their needs. Children between the ages of 12 and 18 months use holophrases, which characterizes a word combined with a gesture or vocal intonation, to convey a meaningful sentence. For example, a child says “water?” to ask for a drink of water.

Next, children put two or three words together. This process takes place between the first and second year of age.

In the first stage of grammar development, sentences include nouns, verbs, and adjectives with no attention to grammar rules. The sentences are closer to a telegraphic speech. For example, children don’t add an “s” to words to make them plural. The words can be an agent (who), object, possession, location, attribute, nomination, or recurrence (more). The verbs that describe actions come later. The expressions vary and there is no specific progression for when they are used.

At around two years, children can use 4 and 5 words in a sentence. The number almost doubles by 30 months. On average, girls use longer sentences than boys.

The more vocabulary the child knows, the more they use grammar rules to construct those words in meaningful sentences. For example, they start using plurals, tenses, and verbs. Children add “ing”, “on”, “in”, “s”, “ed”, “a”, and “the” to their sentences.

Three to four year old children use the “wh” questions and the negatives (not, no). They practise and correct themselves until the full sentence is accurate. The same applies to the use of “ed” to verbs in the past tense. At first, the children overregularize where “ed” is also applied to irregular verbs.

As children grow older, they continue to refine their language. Adults have the responsibility to reinforce children’s expressions by giving them time to self-correct without shaming them. Communication through language is necessary to succeed in a global world. Using more than one language and making mistakes are an inherent part of the process.

Reference:
Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2012). The developing child (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

HOME

Social and Academic Languages in Early Childhood Education

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

Children are vocal but not all talk leads to success. When children talk with each other during play, they vocalise their thoughts. A complex play situation is associated with a similarly complex thinking process. To reach higher levels of language and cognition, children need to extend their repertoire of experiences from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

There are two types of languages, the social and the academic. They have different features with regards to context, cognitive demand, and required language as follows:
1- Context: While the social language focuses on familiar topics from the immediate environment, the academic language helps interpret unfamiliar subjects that are not within the immediate circle of the child.
2- The cognitive demand: The social language is based on what is concrete and personal while the academic language extends to abstract learning.
3- Language used: The social language relies on everyday familiar words that are understood in the immediate environment of the child. The academic language, on the other hand, can capture a diverse audience and be technical.

Educators play an important role in the future linguistic trajectory of children as the academic language can be enhanced by the type of questions that educators ask during daily activities.

Blank (as cited in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014) developed four levels of talk that tap into increasing levels of cognition.
• The first level is “Matching” where children are asked to respond to information by describing, observing, or touching something in front of them.
• The second level is “Selective Analysis” where children respond by focusing on specific information or categories presented to them.
• The third level is “Reordering Perception” where children need to predict an outcome or a solution based on the presented information.
• The fourth level is “Reasoning” where children have to respond to “What if” questions. They need to draw from the text and their personal experiences to justify their answers. The answer is not directly provided to them.

Educators who do not help children travel the path from the social to the academic language are failing those children. Children need to succeed in a global world full of complex layers where higher levels of language and cognition will be extremely helpful to achieve success.

Reference:
Fellowes, J. & Oakley, G. (2014). Language, literacy and early childhood education (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.

HOME

Phonics in Early Childhood Education

~ futureglobalchild ~ 1 Comment

It is important for children to decode letters in order to read and write correctly. One of the methods of teaching reading is through phonics where sound-letter relationships are used for word recognition.

It is recommended to teach children phonics systematically at about five years of age. This approximation works for most children although some children will be ready much earlier and others would still need additional time prior to engaging with phonics.

“Phonics” teaching should be:
• Enjoyable.
• Systematic.
• Included in daily activities.
• Monitored.
• Taught in context.

Children will remember the letters better when they are included in a story and where words have meanings relevant to the main text.

Examples of approaches to teaching phonics include:

1- Focusing on common phonograms such as “ack”, “ight”, “out”, “ine”, “ing” and then adding a letter to them in order to highlight word families. The educator introduces the letters and sounds them in an intentional manner.

2- Analysing words during shared reading. This is a whole-to-part approach where children learn the word first and then decode the letters that form that word. Children who have a wide exposure to books and texts are able to analyse the letters better than children with little exposure to readings.

3- Asking the children to make the sound of each letter as they are forming words.
Combining the above approaches and monitoring what works best for each child help educators develop a sequence for learning where all children can succeed.

Reference:
Fellowes, J. & Oakley, G. (2014). Language, literacy and early childhood education (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.

 

HOME

Health and Safety in the Outdoor Environment

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

How could the outdoor environment be safe so children could enjoy it?

Some factors that need to be considered to ensure a safe outdoor environment are the number of adults supervising the space, the availability of open-ended material, the provision of supervised water play, and the safety of the equipment.

The publication “Learning Outdoors. Benefits/Risks” explores the keys to success for learning in an outdoor environment. The link is:
https://natureplaysa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NPSA-Learning-Outdoors-Benefits-Risks-opt.pdf

The main points are:
• Children will experience different seasons and types of weather and, by doing so, they strengthen their immune system.

• Colds spread through viruses. As long as children dress well for the cold weather, they are not at risk of getting sick. Actually, the outdoor environment will bring fresh air.

• The outdoor environment presents diverse opportunities for exploration which could have consequences for emotional wellbeing as all children can get involved with different levels of engagement, complexity, and satisfaction.

• Children walking outside in different seasons will experience the wet and feel of the ground.

• In the warm and hot weathers, it is important to be sun smart and carry out steps for self-protection.

• Children have sensitive skin and need to use sunscreens to reduce UV exposure. One site that could be visited for details is: https://www.sunsmart.com.au/

These are few points that need to be accounted for an enjoyable experience outdoors.

HOME

Universal Design: Learning for All

~ futureglobalchild ~ Leave a comment

To achieve learning for all children, where each child could develop cognitive, physical, social, and emotional abilities, the early childhood curriculum needs to be designed with the following parameters in mind:

* Presentation of a concept: Any new concept should be introduced with at least three ways, each focusing on a different sense.

* Type of teaching: Intentional or directed teaching should be planned based on the children’s developmental needs. In addition, the educator should extend the child’s learning experiences as they are naturally occurring.

* Diverse ways to monitor learning: Formative and evaluative assessment should be derived from multiple means of representation. One child might be able to verbally show understanding of a concept, a second child might write, a third child might draw, and a fourth child might act the concept.

By carefully targeting the design, the process, and the monitoring so they include open-ended options, educators could engage children in an enjoyable learning journey.

Suggested reference for further reading:
Dinnebeil, L. A., Boat, M., & Bae, Y. (2013). Integrating principles of universal design into the early childhood curriculum. Dimensions of Early Childhood, 41(1), 3-13.

HOME