Welcome and Introduction
Project team members work on a daily basis in multicultural surroundings and have written this website to support families on the topic of settling children into a multilingual setting. This website was created with modern kindergartens in mind to help provide children with a positive settling-in experience regardless of their cultural, social and emotional background.
This website focuses on:
Welcoming children to kindergarten
Working with educators on how to expand a child’s community to include peers and non-family members
Providing tools and skills to foster prosilience
This website is a compilation of theory and personal stories and tips from experienced educators as well as collected knowledge from all partner institutions. The following sections offer ideas and reflections of respectful pedagogical methods towards children between 11 months and 7 years old.
This research guides families with case studies, reflective questions and theory. At the beginning of each section there is a case study which will be discussed through relative theory and practical tips. This allows the reader to apply the theory to practical everyday situations in order to promote prosilience. The concept of prosilience used in this handbook refers to preparing children for any situation they may encounter not only in kindergarten but throughout the rest of their lives. The practical tips and case studies are included for families to help their children grow confidence and feel secure about transitioning into new environments. The authors use the term prosilience not as a reactive way to deal with trauma but as a proactive way to help foster confident and secure children. It is specifically applied to the settling in process discussed in this handbook.
This handbook will give families tools to better understand their child’s settling in process and to positively participate in this exciting time in their child’s life.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE AND AFFECTION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
In this website, we take an empathetic, child-centred and affectionate approach to teaching and caretaking in early childhood in an institutionalized setting. We are convinced that the emotional sphere, love, affection and empathy are vital to a child’s development and a fundamental aspect in institutionalized care as well as in the home. Feelings and emotions play a tremendous role in raising healthy and stable children, it is an undeniable aspect of human life, parenting and teaching. Translating emotions and feelings into facts and numbers, however, has been rather unexplored for a long time. In recent years, the scientific field of feelings and emotions and their impact on human life, especially in early childhood, has grown. It has grown to the extent that it is now possible to scientifically prove the importance of love and affection in early childhood and its impact on the child’s brain development, cognitive development, psychological development, physical development and more.
All aspects mentioned in this website fall back on the fundamental idea of a respectful, empathetic and affectionate way of interacting with one another. Not only is this essential for the child’s development as a whole but also does it teach children a way of meeting people in a certain mindset, the way the children have been met before by their parents and teachers. It equips them with a view on the world and others that is shaped by respect, empathy, love and affection based on their personal experiences in the home and in an institutionalized setting. These children will be able to pass it on because they have experienced it first-hand.