As I innocently watched Bluey with my children the other day, my one-year-old daughter crawled over and pulled herself up against the couch, beckoning for me to pick her up. As I lazily dragged her up onto my big belly she buried her face into my chest, for what I thought was a cuddle… Boy, did I get the shock of my life as she took a big chomp out of my skin.
[…]Do you ever wish your kids could understand just how much you love them? Have you ever wondered why the things that make you feel loved may not work in the same way for your child? As parents, even though our children sometimes drive us crazy, we love them unconditionally; but how could we express love in a way that they really understand.
Literacy is the capacity, confidence and disposition to use language in all its forms. Literacy incorporates a range of modes of communication including music, movement, dance, story telling, visual arts, media and drama, as well as talking, listening, viewing, reading and writing. Contemporary texts include electronic and print based media.
Numeracy is the capacity, confidence and disposition to use mathematics in daily life. Children bring new mathematical understandings through engaging with problem solving. It is essential that the mathematical ideas with which young children interact are relevant and meaningful in the context of their current lives.
[…]As learners, no matter how old or young we are, we all have unique skills that lay a foundation for how we learn. These skills are called dispositions for learning. They are the underlying attributes that enable us to learn. No one has created a concise list that everyone agrees on.
“So, are you looking forward to the School Holidays?” This is my favourite question to ask families as the term starts to end. Every parent replies with a range of differences and the same similarities. The similarities are usually a tone of uncertainty and an expression of resignation.
If you have ever lived with a child human being then you have experienced a moment like this: My number four child has weet-bix for breakfast every day. She is also obsessed with eating whatever someone else has, particularly mum’s food. So, during breakfast, when all four children are sitting down eating their variety of breakfasts,
[…]It’s very hard to handle separation anxiety as a parent. We just want to hug our children and stay close to them. But the separation is necessary, because we must go to work, or our house just needs to be cleaned or our children need to experience new things, or we just need some R & R.
[…]The moment your child was born their identity was being constructed and influenced by three things. First, they found themselves born somewhere, in a location that would shape their identity. Then they found themselves in a family, who would have the greatest influence on who they would become.
We all have friends, family members and colleagues who say one thing and do another. We very quickly learn that their ‘word’ means nothing. Children quickly learn whether our word means anything. From a very young age, children will hear and understand the things we say.
At First Steps, we always seem to have quite a few boys who like to be involved in Rough-and-Tumble play, and this can often make the educators supervising uncomfortable because they are worried about the boys hurting one another.
We often hear the word Resilience when talking about the development of young children, but what does it really mean? When talking about teaching children resilience we talking about a child’s ability to cope with ups and downs, and bounce back from the challenges they experience during childhood.
