Early Childhood Education Blog
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Conscious Gardening with Children
As parents, guardians, and educators, teaching children about where the food we eat comes from is essential to ensuring the next generation’s ability to make ethical and healthy decisions in the short and long term. Communities continue to spend less time engaging with food systems in concurrence with technological evolution, and as a result, so grows the distance between ourselves and our food systems. Sadly, many children grow up lacking connection to the journey that food takes from seed to fork. It’s a bleak situation, but fortunately for all of us, gardening exists. Ideally people of all ages, of all socioeconomic backgrounds, and from all parts of the world would…
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For the Love of Sensory
There comes a moment that every parent, daycare teacher, and early childhood educator encounters when feeding an infant. The bib is secured, the spoon stirring the mush is handled steadily to ensure it gets directly into his mouth, and the wet washcloth is ready in hand to instantly wipe away any spillage. As I place the first spoonful into his mouth, I have the same reaction every grown up innately does– the spoon swipe. You know the motion, wiping upward with the spoon pushing that extra little bit of mush back into the little one’s mouth. With all of these attempts to keep clean, it is a common response that…
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The Fear of Failing
Teaching an Appreciation for Failure and Encouraging a Growth Mindset Many factors contribute to a child’s inner voice and mindset. Educators, parents and guardians have the ability to shape and reverse how a child reacts, feels and approaches academic and personal challenges. A child’s fixed mindset and fear of failure can hinder his desire to fully immerse himself in learning experiences. When a child has a fixed mindset, he believes that his intelligence is limited; he does not respond well to failure—associating failure with being unintelligent and unsuccessful; and he will seek out activities that are not challenging to validate his intelligence rather than work through an activity that he…