NUACHTÁN KINDER | July 2021
BENEFITS OF BUILDING GAMES FOR CHILDREN
Article retrieved from Internet www.guiainfantil.com
Building games are one of the star toys throughout childhood. From the first year of life until almost adolescence, varying the type of pieces and the difficulty of construction, children are excited when they play to build, stack, destroy and start over again.
Whatever the pieces we have chosen, with their various shapes and ways of fitting, stacking, or screwing, building games develop children’s creativity when it comes to building houses, castles, cities, cars, objects, or characters of their choice and are essential for children’s cognitive development, but also useful for their emotional and social development.
The benefits of building games go beyond stimulating children’s imagination and creativity. They favor the development of various cognitive abilities. Here are some of them:
- They develop hand-eye coordination They favor fine psychomotor skills of hands and fingers
- They develop visual-spatial and visual-perceptual skills
- Promote organization
- Stimulate mathematics
- Work on physics
- Children play with constructions
- Encourage attention and concentration
- Teach children colors
- Enrich oral expression
- Encourage imagination
- Promote cognitive thinking
AGENCY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING
When our young learners have agency, the role of teacher and learner changes; the relationship between them is seen as a partnership, and this is reflected most clearly in English language learning.
Students take initiatives, express interests, and doubts, make choices, and are aware of their learning goals, which serves to keep them interested. The teacher remains open to this process so that the acquisition of English is dynamic and interesting. They take ownership and responsibility for their learning and work collaboratively with teachers and peers to plan, present, and assess learning needs.
Teachers recognize students’ abilities by listening to and respecting their ideas and responding to them stimulating the bond with their second language.
When teachers support learners’ agency, they perceive their ability, needs and interests, and reflect on them to personalize learning for natural and fluent second language acquisition. Learners are given the opportunity to be creative which maintains interest and expands vocabulary beyond the academic program.
Using assessment information as a basis for learning and teaching, we reflect on when students need help and when they do not.
We listen and respond to each learner’s activities to expand their thinking skills, providing the vocabulary and grammatical tools necessary for them to grow in their development.
Within the strategies to support agency, in a second language, the creation of common routines such as: asking students’ opinions when developing routines, transitions, signals, meetings, cleaning up and leaving, allows gaining familiarity with basic structures on which later learning is built.
Based on: My IB (2020, September 22). Lerner Agency.
PANDEMIC FATIGUE -Psychopedagogy-
Pandemic fatigue is a concept established by the World Health Organization (WHO) to refer to the reaction to the prolonged measures and restrictions generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
«What has been seen is that, over time, when these necessary measures are maintained to take care of people’s health, they end up causing generalized exhaustion,» explains Dr. Mauricio Droguett, a psychiatrist.
The specialist assures that the pandemic fatigue can manifest in:
- Exhaustion .
- Overwhelm with the routine that the pandemic has implied .
- This can lead to feelings of hopelessness in the face of what lies ahead, anxiety, loneliness, among other things.
In this scenario, the doctor emphasizes that the danger lies in the fact that this exhaustion makes people take less care of themselves, use less masks, not respecting the quarantine, wash their hands less and, therefore, expose themselves more to the possibility of contagion.
«The fact that we are now in summer, where perhaps vacations are not going to be as we had expected, can increase this feeling of frustration and lead to symptoms such as anguish, sadness, greater irritability and the appearance of symptoms that go beyond what may be the natural reaction to pandemic fatigue», he indicates.
In this regard, he explains that, as stated by the WHO, pandemic fatigue is a natural reaction that we can understand and that is generated after a prolonged period of travel limitations, fear of losing our job, fear of getting sick, etc.; however, we must be aware of when this feeling exceeds our control to consult.
When to seek medical advice?
The psychiatrist points out that, in general, emotions cease to be normal when they begin to affect our daily functioning; when they alter our capacity for work, our level of concentration, make it difficult to relate to our environment, make us more irritable, etc.
«When I see that my emotions become a burden and do not allow me to function. That is already an indication that it is necessary to look for help to be able to discuss and that a specialist shows us the best management of different situations, because this pandemic fatigue can make us react worse to the daily difficulties of life», he comments.
Advice
Dr. Mauricio Droguett recommends the following measures to better cope with pandemic fatigue and its consequences:
- Take care of our body. This includes taking care of our diet, taking care of the hours of sleep (at least 6 or 7 hours) and improving physical activity.
- Limit the amount of news we are listening to.
- Include strategies to reduce stress in our routine: Here the fundamental thing, in addition to rest, is to look for activities that make us enjoy with our loved ones to relieve the time we are locked up.
- Maintain contact with other people. It is essential to maintain a frequent connection; this can be by phone, email, meetings through streaming channels, etc. This helps to reduce the feeling of loneliness and confinement.
- It is important to know that these feelings are natural and normal. Acknowledge our feelings. Denying what we are feeling means a double effort and does not allow us to take charge of these emotions.
- Try to think positively. For example, change the thought of confinement for the concept of care. We are taking care of ourselves, and we are taking care of others and that this situation will not last forever.
- Create new activities and routines to share as a family.
«A factor that can increase this feeling of pandemic fatigue is hopelessness, the feeling that this is never going to end, that it is going to get worse and worse; that is why it is very important that we nurture hope, favorable expectations in vaccines, thinking that although there is still time to go, the time will come when we will be able to resume our life with ‘normality’,» concludes.
Bibliography:
SENSE OF BELONGING
The sense of belonging is the child’s feeling of being accepted by others, of being considered important and part of a group. This sense of belonging begins to develop in the first years of life. If it develops properly, children will be able to socialize much more easily and feel more integrated in the different groups they will have to be part of for the rest of their lives (school, friends, sports, teamwork, etc.).
The role of parents in this aspect is essential. We recommend creating a family environment in which the child participates, where they learn to take responsibilities shared by all; this will allow the child to see their family as a group of which they are an important part and learns to share the good and not so good things, to accept and follow the rules, respecting the authority of their parents. All this will help them to adapt to any group they have to be part of.
A sense of belonging not only has a positive impact on relationships, teamwork, and the work environment, but also contributes to improvements in motivation, commitment, performance, and rebuilding trust. We are inspired by people we trust, so we follow their example and recommendations. To build trusting relationships, a leader must be authentic, helpful, empathetic, fulfill what they commit to; treat colleagues with respect and help them to grow and achieve their goals. This is achieved, based on self-knowledge, which is nurtured by a sense of belonging.
At Colegio Celta we understand the role that a sense of belonging plays in the development of children and that is why the concept of CELTA COMMUNITY is so important to us.
#CONORGULLOCELTASOY!
THE IMPORTANT WORK OF THE SUPPORT TEACHERS
The support teacher is the person who, through professional work with children, helps the educator in the psycho-pedagogical and assistance and has positive skills and attitudes that help them in their development process from 0 to 6 years old, giving them priority attention.
She is in charge, to a great extent, of the daily work with the children by taking care of them, helping them with their meals, stimulating them, playing, and spending time with them. She can stay in charge of the group in case the educator is absent, with the certainty of continuing the planned work. In addition, it constitutes one of the central axes within the teaching-learning process of the child by promoting their integral development with motivation, affectivity, and interaction.
They develop attitudes such as:
- Demonstrating affection, understanding and tolerance.
- Reflect on their educational work.
- Interact with the child to develop daily work.
- Show responsibility, willingness, creativity, and solidarity.
- Generate an atmosphere of trust and respect in all members of the group, especially for the child.
- They show an observant, interested and guiding attitude.
