Learning Outcome 3: ‘Children have a strong sense of wellbeing’ tends to get focused on for obstacle courses and outdoor play, but there are a number of ways to explore this. Here’s 5 tips to support children with learning outcome 3.
- Create strong attachments with children: Spending time with children and allowing them to form strong attachments will support their emotional wellbeing. Consider rostering for infants and children with additional needs so that they have consistency of educators, and also keep this in mind when transitioning children between between rooms. If there are new educators in the room children are going to then new attachments need to be formed. The stronger the relationships are the more a child will feel secure to explore and challenge themselves.
- Learn from families how to support their child’s emotional wellbeing: Use your enrolment forms and orientation process to find out how best to support children’s emotional needs instead of expecting children to respond to our methods. This can support children to feel secure quicker and also allow us as educators to better understand how to connect with children.
- Support children’s emotional vocabulary: Children will become more emotionally aware if they can understand what they are feeling and what they need to support them. Labelling children’s emotions can help with this, to support children’s awareness of the different types of emotions outside of happy, sad and angry. Plutchnik’s Wheel of Emotion can help with this increased vocabulary.
- Notice that children are developing physical skills all the time: Even when a child is sitting they are using physical skills like core strength and balance. Instead of expecting children to only demonstrate physical skills during planned gross motor experiences, being open to noticing the children’s physical development through their own play can support documenting this learning outcome.
- Allow children to get actively involved in food preparation and meals: By engaging children in mealtimes, and as much of the process as possible, not only are there other learning opportunities but it also means children are more likely try new foods and explore healthy options. Ways children can get involved in meal preparation include reviewing the menu, growing the food, serving the food, ordering the food from the supermarket, cooking the food.
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