Focusing on Developing our Toddlers Social Skills!

Now I'm working withing a pre school setting, i have been researching like mad about things to do in pre school. Circle time by Jenny Mosley was given to me by my Boss and i have been engrossed in its ideas ever since.

Lets talk about circle time, in my last blog i mentioned circle time, and i would now like to talk about the benefits of these skills that last a life time, and are quite vital in our children enjoying a desirable future, the wonder of doing these activities which i will talk about is great because we are instilling good things into our children, at a time when they are absolutely soaking everything in.

We can teach our children and help develop their self esteem, confidence, and achieve their potential in life.

What is Self Awareness - knowing the relationship between thoughts, feelings and reactions, knowing why we feel that way, and being able to communicate how we are feeling.

We learn to name how we feel as we get older, but at a young age we have not developed this skill yet, children in nursery are just starting their journey towards emotional self awareness.

Empathy insight into the motives, feelings and behaviours of others and the ability to communicate this understanding.

helping young children to manage their emotions is vital, we do this by listening and responding, and acknowledging what the child is feeling,.

During circle time we can talk about how we feel, or someone else is feeling, it gets children to see that we all have emotions that they are common and that they pass.

By talking about emotions and how we feel when we have them, eg anger, it can make us get all hot and bothered, by talking this through, children learn labels and become more aware.

Getting in at the roots

I have been learning all about an early years activity called Circle Time - the objective is to get children talking to each other.

Through short, fun, activities in which we all sit in a circle and have something to talk about, helps to develop all kinds of attributes in the children for example, we can start to discuss emotions and feelings for example, we can take in another object like a teddy or a doll, and we can use the object to discuss things that may be going on.

In order for children to develop into successful adults this lesser depends on their IQ and more on their ability to socialise and communicate, empathise etc.

Empathise you may say, as a friend of mine said to me, he said 'empathy is something you are either born with or your not', not sure if anyone agrees with that, in my opinion empathy is something that is learned through experience, by already experiencing something we gain insight into having these feelings ourselves therefore when someone else expresses what we have been through we can feel for them, therefore we become empathy.

Let me start at the beginning!

In order to become optimally functioning adults we all need to have well developed Social, Emotional and Behavioural skills, Self awareness, Empathy, a way to manage ones own emotions, social skills and motivation - Circle time can help with every aspect of this, and is so simple to implement i think its fascinating and fantastic the things that are being brought into place in nurserys now, and am glad to be a part of it.

In my next blog i will go into more detail about each of the Social, Emotional and Behavioural skills, and how we can foster and nuture these fundamental aspects of personality with our young.

Crawling

Crawling is a key period in a babys physical and intellectual development. Crawling may seem simple enough, but the serious of movements are actually very complex.
Alternate movment between all four limbs, maintains the centre of gravity and they are able to propel themselves forward.

After only a short amount of tummy time a day, reults will soon be seen.

Height Predictor

I came across this great little tool online.

You can estimate the height of your baby, it works by putting in the parents height, and then babys weight and height now etc, then it does a calculation and hey presto! we have an estimated height for your little darling!

check it out
http://children.webmd.com/healthtool-kids-height-predictor

I tried it out on myself and it was spot on!!

around 7 months

Your baby is beginning to understand a lot about how things work in the world. One example is "object permanence" — understanding that an object continues to exist even after it disappears from sight. That's why peek a boo is a favorite game. Similarly, if your baby drops a toy or his dummy out of his crib or highchair, he may look for it, whereas in the past he cried for the object because it had gone missing.

jack in the box would be fun right now!