Episode 59 - Social and Emotional Learning Through Play

Heather Welch is chating about Play or as we like to say play based learning or learning through play at edx education. 

Over the past 2 years we have chatted on the podcast with so many experts on this topic, created amazing educational resources, experiences and toys at edx education . 

Last podcast we looked at the value of play, let’s look at the social and emotional learning why is it important, how is it developed and why we integrate this through play in the early years…

The last few years have brought forward many issues that children face from managing their emotions, being able to self regulate have empathy for others and so much more. In education we talk a lot about children social and emotional development especially in the early years.

Highlights from this episode:

(01:19) The importance of SEL in early development

(03:08) The five key areas for competence

(06:28) Play as a learning tool

#edxeducation #learningthroughplay #playlearncreate #handsonlearning 

You're listening to edX Education. This podcast series discusses play, being creative and learning for children. Join Heather Welch sharing knowledge, information, and support on play-based learning. We'll explore the benefits, value, different stages of play, and so much more. Let's play, learn, and create to develop lifelong learners and leaders.

Hello everyone, it's Heather Welch. I'm so excited to chat about one of my favorite topics today. Last week we chatted about the value of play, and this week we're gonna chat about social and emotional learning, all based around play or as we like to say, play-based learning or learning through play. Over the last two years we've had.

The absolute pleasure of chatting on this podcast with so many experts on this topic, creating amazing educational resources, experience, and toys at edX education. Last podcast, we had so much fun just chatting about the value of play, but today, social and emotional learning, why it's important, how it's developed, and how we integrate this through play in the early.

The last few years have brought forward many issues that children face from managing their emotions, being able to self-regulate, have empathy for others, and so much more. In education. We talk a lot about children, social and emotional learning development, especially in the early years. This is an important skill for all children as we know, and not all children, developing this as quickly as others for social and emotional.

Some develop physically gross motor skills more and takes a little bit longer to self-regulate. First of all, let's establish what is social and emotional learning and why it's vital for children. I'm gonna break it down to SEL today. You know, SELs, it's an education concept that helps kids gain important skills beyond academics, like subjects like math, science, and other core school subjects.

SEL allows children to identify their feelings, understand and communicate with others, build strong relationships, and make good empathetic choices. As caregivers, this is just as important to show children a role model. We're gonna blueprint what this means. Sel, children develop SEL when they are playing because they're understanding the world and themselves and they're exploring, they're experimenting and they're going through, they're communicating to their toys or they're communicating to what they're doing if it's in negative or if it's a positive situation.

And as a caregiver, we can learn so much from. Developing SEL requires there's five key key areas of competence for sel, which is self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills. And decision making, or as we like to say, responsible decision making. You know, SCLs not a new concept. It was developed by a group of educators and researchers in the eighties by Tim Shriver and Dr.

Wiseberg, and through this program, they probably need SCL strategies to use across K to 12 classroom. Let's look a little bit further into these five key areas for competence. I mean, self-awareness is understanding as a child, it's understanding your emotions and thoughts and how they influence your behavior.

You know, if you are cross, how do you behave? If someone upset you, what do you do? This will include skills such as identifying your emotions. Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you angry? Are you surpris? Self perception, recognizing your strengths, self-confidence. The next one's self-management. I think this is a big one.

I know that one of my children struggled with this. The ability to regulate your emotions and behavior in different situations and to set it towards, you know, it could be a work, could be a school goal, could just be a personal goal. And these skills will include executive function, self-regulation, stress management, and self discipline.

Then there's responsible decision making, and this is the ability to make a positive choice and take the responsibility for positive and negative outcomes. These skills will include identifying problems, analyzing situations, solving problems, and reflection on what happened. Social awareness. This is the ability to just hate the perspective of and empathize with others.

These skills will include empathy, appreciating difference, and respect. Relationship skills is the ability to establish and maintain healthier, meaningful relationships. This will include skills like communicating, clearly, listening, cooperation, resisting negative pressure, resolving conflicts, and supporting one another.

These skills are all taught at a very young age and through play. You know, if you're looking at these skills such as self-management, social awareness, and relationships, when children are at nursery or playing with friends, this is, they start to learn to share, they start to learn to manage their emotions.

And sometimes they don't manage their emotions, but they actually need help in learning how to manage these emotions. And that's as caregivers where we come. If a child goes to a setting, their key work is someone you could work with in order to do this. Otherwise, you're working with your child and explaining these emotions.

One of my own children found it hard to self regulate and we had to, this had a negative impact on his social skills, his communication, his self-management, and as a family unit. It's taken us, you know, a while to work around him and his community. Like we had to work with the nursery family, friends around us in order to develop these skills.

And it is an ongoing process. This does take a while and I suppose this brings on to, you know, being ready for school, school readiness and play. You know, school readiness is about children and parents that are being ready to send their school back to an like, to an education environment. And we need to prepare these little ones to engage with children through play.

Talk to them about what their positive experiences are, make them feel safe, supported, help them learn through experiences and play. Allow them to explore the world. Through play-based learning, we could build children's confidence, motor skills, cognitive development, social and emotional, fun and engaging for parents and caregivers as well.

If children are given the free time to play at home, you'll understand what's going on in their head as well, and you can leave them to play. And then you can, if you'd like, you can observe, or even you can join in, you could ask open-ended questions about, you know, just say a princess or a monster is climbing to the top of the castle and then it falls and it has a bad experience.

You could ask them, you know, why had that bad experience, Why did it fall? Do you think it's gonna climb up again? Was it sad? Was it surprised? Ways to integrate the five key competent skills at home or even in the classroom realistically, is be present and observant. Show them that you are listening, that you are there.

Create a supportive atmosphere where they can talk about these issues and they can actually talk about their emotions they're not suppressed. Maybe even share life experiences on what you went through as an adult caregiver or an experience that you've had and how you felt and how you overcame.

Stimulate discussion through play. You might find that this is more effective, stimulating a discussion, especially with children in the early years. The other one is give your child the opportunity to practice their emotions. They are gonna get upset and when they see red, sometimes you're gonna have to wait a little bit and then talk about self-regulating and what you can do next time.

Find something that works well for each child. Positive social and emotional development's important. The development influence a child's self confidence, empathy, the ability to develop a meaningful, lasting friendship and partnership, and a sense of importance and value around him or her, or them. You know, even as young adults, it's healthy to develop these identities, manage emotions, achieve personal goals, feel and show empathy for others.

Establish and maintain supportive relat. So just to recap on, to reflect on the areas to develop for sel, which is self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. This can be done through play. If you look at a child when they're building a structure, just say they're using blocks and they didn't do the foundations very well, and they're getting frustrated.

They go through all these emotions and then the, the largest tower in the world falls down. You can see they sometimes for them, that's the worst thing that's happened, and so, They're getting upset and they've gotta learn to self-manage or even keep going. The persistence. So self-awareness, self-management, and then have to make responsible decisions.

Do they build it? Again, it's problem solving. So even small play activities like this is sel, it's building, and then you can chat about. Are they sharing it with friends? Are they building relationships? Are they working together? So in a classroom or at home, do they working with their siblings? If not, are they working with their parents to build this?

Social and emotional learning in order to be ready for school is so important. Sometimes people see play and they think it's meaningless, but there's a lot more going on when children are playing, even if it's solitary, playing parallel playing as small children. I think the most important thing for us to do is to give children the time and the opportunity to play.

So let's play, learn, and create to happy, healthy children to be socially and emotionally supported. Thank you very much for listening. There are so many exciting developments happening right now in education, BDX education. Would love to hear from you. So do get in touch or subscribe to our podcast, which is available.

Apple, Podbean, Spotify. Tune in and so many more. This podcast series is brought to you by Heather Welch from MedX Education. As she'd like to say, Let's create lifelong learners.