In a world full of complexities, it is important to teach positive life skills in the early years. One way teachers and parents could enhance positivity in children is to engage them in simple and fun activities.

Teachers and parents could:

• Help children to verbalise their feelings and to find solutions to daily problems.
• Give children projects to work out in groups and have them come up with ideas together.
• Assign individual activities to the children who work better alone.
• Ask children to share funny events or stories and record the stories for future reading.
• Acknowledge situations where children might feel helpless and provide preventive actions in advance. For example, transitions from home to child care or from child care to school can be alleviated by having parents discuss what is going to happen, visit the place, and give the child time to ease into the new environment. The same applies to field trips where locations are unknown to children.
• Initiate the use of short sentences around happiness and smiles where all children can participate and remember the sentences for later use. One such activity is to start by saying:

Take life with a smile.
Take the day with a smile.
Take breakfast with a smile.
Then ask children to continue adding sentences about school or home activities. They could add:
Take food with a smile.
Take play with a smile.
Take puzzles with a smile.
Take story reading with a smile …

and so on until children remember most activities they engage in. Children can be asked to make their own song, story, or drawing around smiling.

• Write reminders such as: The more we smile … The more life will smile back…

HOME