Hi guys, it's Krista from Playing With a Purpose. Today I want to share with you some of the tips and tricks that's worked really well for me that I've learned over the past 25 plus years of working with young children. I want to give a shout out to Diane from Diane's Daycare.
She requested this video a long time ago and this video is for you. I came up with seven things that work very well for me in my classroom and I hope it can help you too. If you're new here, my name is Krista And I work with children between the ages of 1 and 4. And I have a daycare in my home and I care for up to 5 children.
On my channel you'll find things related to childcare, some shopping hauls, as well as the odd family vlog. So if this is something that interests you, please consider subscribing. The first thing I find very important is to set boundaries.
It's really, really important that children understand what your expectations are. You can't really expect children to follow rules of the classroom if the expectations have never been given to them. Personally, I find it best when you don't make too many rules, but you're just very consistent with all the ones that you do have.
Setting expectations is one of the first things I like to do in my classroom. Setting expectations is super important to achieving... positive behavior in your classroom. Don't set the expectations so high that the children can't reach them.
Make sure that these expectations are reachable so that the children can be successful. Some of these examples might be when we're out for a walk, you must hold my hand or the stroller or when we eat, we eat at the table. Setting expectations for communication like no whining.
It's also really important that the children understand why those expectations are there. So when you're explaining to them why they need to hold your hand, give them age-appropriate information. You must hold my hand when we're outside to keep you safe.
Or we can't throw blocks inside the classroom because it can hurt somebody or something. Be firm and consistent. It's not okay to hurt your friends. My job is to make sure that I keep you and your friends safe. If you have a child that's tends to whine in the classroom.
You could say something like, I don't understand when you speak like that. Can you use your regular voice so that I can understand you better? If one of the classroom rules is no throwing hard objects, you can redirect them by saying, we can't throw hard objects in the classroom because that can hurt somebody or something.
But here's a beanbag and those are safe to throw. That gives them an understanding of why they aren't allowed to throw the item in the classroom but it also gives them a replacement of something to do instead. If you have a child that's stubborn and continually breaks the rules just say something like I see that you're having trouble listening to the rules today so we'll try again tomorrow and just simply remove the item and try again the next day. It's really important to just be really to the point but don't give too much attention for the behavior. The second thing I learned is that you need to be willing to repeat.
What I mean by that is expectations need to be repeated on a daily basis. As you transition throughout your day, just give simple reminders of what the expectations are and eventually the children understand the expectations. The third strategy that I love to use in my classroom is model.
One of my favourite parts of my day is being able to play with the children and it's a great time for me to model what my expectations are for them. through how I play and interact with them. Some of the things I like to do is show the children that it's fun to play together. I love to engage in imaginary play, rolling a ball back and forth, or building a tower with the children. This is a great opportunity to teach the children that it's fun to play with others.
When you have a group of babies and toddlers in a classroom, a season in their life where they're learning how to share, and interact with others. So you're going to have to expect that there's going to be some conflict in the classroom. One of the things I like to do is if there's a popular item like a truck or dolls, those are items that you want to have multiples in the classroom.
When you offer multiples of favourites in the classroom, you'll see less frustration and less conflict in the classroom. The other thing I love to do while I'm modelling is if I see a child wants a specific toy, I can come alongside them and say, hey, I see that you'd like to play with that. Let's ask Adam if he's finished playing with it.
And then I give them the language to be able to ask their peer if they're ready to give up the toy. And if the child isn't. not ready to give up the toy, you can acknowledge their feelings by saying, I see that you want to have a turn with that toy, but Adam isn't finished with it yet, but you can have a turn when he's finished.
I put conflict, but I should have said managing conflict. We need to be ready to intervene when necessary. These young children are just developing socially and emotionally, and so it's our job to help them manage these big emotions.
So be ready to intervene when necessary. So for example, if a child takes a toy from another child, you could go up to the child with a respectful tone and a calm voice and just say, I can't let you take this toy away from Adam. He's not finished playing with it yet.
You can have a turn when he's finished. It will be reassuring that they will get a turn eventually. And if you deliver the message calmly, you won't make the child feel like they're in trouble.
While it's super important to be attentive, I also strongly believe that sometimes it's good to allow children to develop these skills. So that means that if you've already been working on some of these skills in the classroom, sometimes you need to step back a little and just see how much they are able to manage on their own. We all know that working with toddlers can be frustrating at times, but try to remind yourself that our job is to help the children learn how to interact socially and emotionally.
It's often said that when we're calm, the children are also calm. So it's very important how we react to these situations. If we want to induce calmness in the classroom, the best way to do it is model it.
Tantrums are very normal during these early years and so it's really important that we help guide them through these big emotions. These self-regulation skills are going to help them lifelong and so when you think of the big picture you're helping these children develop a lot of self-control and self-regulation skills for their entire life. The next strategy is communication. When there's multiple people involved in a child's life, so a daycare provider, grandparents, parents, it becomes very confusing to a child when there's different expectations.
Children eventually do learn that there's different expectations for them depending on what setting they're in. But when it comes to the fundamentals, it's so important that you communicate with the parents so that you can deliver the same message to the children, especially when it comes to things like eating and sleeping and how to regulate their emotions. In my experience, if we are consistent with bedtime routine or eating routines or expectations, when parents and providers both have the same expectations regarding sleep or eating, you won't see the children pushing the boundaries nearly as often. things will come together a lot quicker. The next strategy is routine.
Similar to the last point, children thrive on routine. If you think about it, it's really common sense. If you're enjoying something that you're doing and you had no idea that it was about to come to an end, that would be very frustrating.
So just acknowledging children's feelings is a big one. But establishing routines is also so beneficial. Children can come to expect when they're going to eat, when they're going to sleep, when they're going to go home, when they're going to come to daycare. When children can predict what's going to happen next it relieves so much stress for them.
Be consistent. There's always a time to break the rules for special occasions but for the most part develop a routine. You eat at the same time every day, you sleep at the same time every day, you You have the same approach to bedtime routines every day.
For example, you don't play music one day and then not play music another day. These seem like little things but they are so important and children will do so much better. Another thing that's helpful is when you're about to transition, just give a small warning. It's almost time to go outside friends. In five minutes we're gonna go outside.
Sometimes I like to use a little a little school bell or a little timer that goes off when it's almost time to go. I used to have a hard time Getting my toddlers to want to come back inside. Many of the children love to spend their time outside and some of the children did not want to come when it was time to go inside. One of the things that I'm not the best at is staying on track for time.
One of the strategies I set up for myself to keep myself on track is to set a little timer with my iPhone. So I learned this little trick sort of by accident but my timer would go off and then the children would hear me call that it was time to come. The children started to recognize and put those two things together. So they started automatically going towards the door when they heard the time. This strategy works like a charm.
I have a little school bell. The children love having a chance to ring the school bell. Having a turn ringing that school bell is a big motivating factor for them to come inside. And the last strategy is helping children learn to problem solve.
What I like to do is I like to give the children some tools to be able to use when there's a conflict. For example, giving them language to help them communicate better. If one of the children are hurt, you could say, where does it hurt?
Is it your leg? Can I give it a little rub? Will that make it feel better?
Talking about boundaries and expectations is really important. One of the ways I like to do this is through green and red choices. These are little cards with both good and bad choices on them. So they might have things like kicking, hitting, biting or Hugging, helping, cleaning.
So during circle, you can play a little activity asking the children if it's a red choice or a green choice. And then throughout your day you can say, is that a green choice you're making or is that a red choice? If you're interested in this activity, I got mine off of Teachers Pay Teachers, and the creator of this activity is Pocket of Preschool.
It's really rewarding when you start to see some of these strategies work in your classroom. It's super rewarding when you start to see the children using these strategies on each other. So it just warms my heart so much to see one of my little friends go up to another friend and say, does your head hurt? Do you want me to rub it?
And I can see one of the children rubbing their friend's head. Those are moments that make it all worthwhile, all the tantrums, moments that can be hectic at times. It just makes it so worth it. when you start to see things working well within the classroom. Also, to encourage problem solving, it's a great idea to read different books so that children have different tools to be able to make good choices.
Some of the series I love are the Have You Filled Your Bucket series or Teeth Are Not for Biting series. These books are great ways to teach the the children the things that often lead to conflict. You're sort of...
teaching some of these things as a preventative measure, but also through the books the children learn more positive ways to conduct their behavior. Ask the children, what do you think we could do to fix this problem? Use every opportunity to have the children think for themselves to think about how they could solve the problem. It's really important to just slowly scaffold their learning process in this so that they can slowly learn how to work out their problems on their own.
We need to give them lots of opportunities to come up with problem solving skills on their own. It's also really wonderful to see children sometimes will come in and help their peers come up with an idea on how to solve a problem. It takes time.
You often see that the first few months you feel like you're getting nowhere, but over time as the children develop and grow, they start to learn a lot of these skills and things start to go so much smoother in the classroom. This is a super simple one that I like to use sometimes in my classroom. But if two children want the same toy, for instance, at the exact same time, I'll say, hmm, how can we fix this problem?
And if we just can't come to a solution, I'll say, I know we can do eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Would you like to do that? And then I simply say, eeny, meeny, miny, catch the tiger by the toe.
If he hollers, let him go. Eeny, meeny, miny. and for some reason the children just accept it and almost every single time the children just accept it so it's very simple things that we can implement to make these sort of conflicts run a lot smoother i also love using the bucket filling idea where if you see a child doing something kind you give them a little ticket throw it in their bucket and say i see that you're being a bucket filler today and likewise if you see a child doing something that's that's not kind or breaking one of the rules you can take one out and say I just saw you being a bucket dipper I'm going to have to remove one of your tickets.
Once the children have some of these things established it's fun to give them all buckets and I love using the books Have You Filled a Bucket Today. Basically it's just teaching the children that we can either be bucket fillers or bucket dippers and so if you see a child being kind they're a bucket filler if you see a child hitting or punching or kicking, they're a bucket dipper. And so just catching the children during the day, doing those things. And let's see if we can be bucket fillers today. How can we be bucket fillers and have the children come up with different ideas on how they can be bucket fillers?
I hope these ideas are helpful for you in your classroom. I'm Krista with Playing With A Purpose. I'll see you next time.