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Early Childhood Education and Care News
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February 25, 2020
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Kia ora, this week how to teach children about gratitude and why it is important, also how early childhood services can bridge the word gap and support vocabulary development among children.
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Small but powerful steps to
build a sense of gratitude
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According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, gratitude is simply "the state of being grateful". Taking it further, PositivePsychology defines gratitude as, "a human emotion that can be most simply defined as appreciation or acknowledgment of an altruistic act".
Early childhood educators can use scaffolding to support a young child's emerging gratefulness, by helping children understand their own feelings and thoughts, as well as those of others.
Why is this important? Gratitude carries with it an abundance of positive outcomes in social-emotional learning – and it plays a critical role in happiness and health. Laying early foundations for young children to develop and practice these skills is important.
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Partnering with parents to bridge the 'word gap'
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The variation between children starting primary school compared to their peers is called the 'word gap', and while the reasons are hotly debated there are some strategies educators can share with families to grow a child’s vocabulary in the years before school.
"Language variation in children is complex and difficult to attribute to a single cause. Regardless of the causes, low levels of vocabulary set limits on literacy, understanding, learning the curriculum and can create a downward spiral of poor language which begins to affect all aspects of life," says Lancaster University's Professor of Language and Literacy Kate Cain, in the Oxford Language Report, Why Closing the Word Gap Matters.
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