A powerpoint presentation made by L'avenir teachers for parents showing their journey and endeavours for the 1st semester of year 2015.

1. OUR JOURNEY &
ENDEAVOUR TILL NOW…
Working with 2-year olds
Smile group, L’avenir
April to September 2015

2. Glimpses of the First Day in April…

6. April 1st & 2nd week
Aim for children:
 Help the children to settle down in the new environment and
feel at home
Aims for ourselves:
 To be more receptive and spontaneous while interacting with
the children…
 Understanding each child’s needs – physical, emotional, mental
and inner needs….
 Linking ourselves with children’s emotions and developing a
bond with them

7. Making model of Jungle
Activities such as…

8. Playing with play dough
Inserting beads

9. Sorting grains Solving Math-mat

10. Playing basket ball Painting tree bark

11. Our Observations & Reflection…
Interacting with children for about two weeks we
came up with the following observations:
 Lack of clarity in speech and vocabulary
 Habit of throwing, chewing and spoiling play materials
 Lack of Body co-ordination and balance
 Hitting and snatching things from others
 Not toilet trained
 Eating tiffin by moving around the place, etc.

12. Action taken…
Seeing the needs of the group we concentrated on
the following as we felt these were essential:
• Providing spaces where each child’s interests could be
taken care of…
 Helping children to learn to share things with their
peers (not to snatch or hit)
 Inculcating the habit of respecting materials and
their belongings

13.  Inculcating the habit of respecting food and eating
their food by sitting at one place
 Providing more physical activities to channelize their
energy positively
We also had Individual meetings with the parents with
whom we felt a need to discuss about their child…

14. Our Observations & Reflection…
After the long summer break we noticed a lot of change
in the group. Whatever we had achieved in the month of
April we now saw washed away - the group had fallen
back to the same emotional anxiety and trauma as
before the break.
Secondly, some new kids had joined the group so the
group size had enlarged. We observed…
After the Summer break…

15.  The children who were fully settled in the month of
April appeared very unsettled and the kids who were
unsettled appeared partially settled now.
 The weather was also one of the factors which made
children a bit unsettled.

16. Besides providing emotional support, we were also
occupied with how to understand each child in a
better way so that we could provide more to them as
per their needs…
 What is the child’s need – inner, emotional, physical,
mental?
 Which activities are giving emotional support to the child?
 What is the strength of the child?
 What kind of conversation is the child having with his/her
peer group?
 What kind of activities does the child want to explore?

17. July 1st and 2nd week
Aims for children:
 Bringing children back to school routine
 Providing emotional support to the new ones to settle
down in the new atmosphere
Aims for ourselves:
 Reconnecting with the children’s needs
 Bringing the group together

18.  Organised unstructured and unsupervised
activities to know more about the child’s
behaviour and interests.
 Maintained daily dairy to record each child’s
gradual growth.
 Provided easy to complex activities to know
children’s grasping power.
Action Taken…

19. Playing with pebbles
Activities such as…

20. Opening the seed pods

21. Putting seeds in the bottle

22. Sharing time

23. Parent’s Dilemma & Anxiety -
during settling down phase
 Other children are settled very well, why not mine…
 Why has my child been ignored…
 My child was moving outdoors alone
without any teacher….
 Everyday children were provided
with the same activities…
 How long is he/she going to take to
settle down…

24.  My child was alone swinging on the
swings and the teacher was
standing at a distance…
 My child does not share what
he/she has done in the school…
 Why does my child play only in the
sand-pit or outdoors and not
indoors or with other children or
toys…

25. Teacher’s Dilemma…
• Seeing the fluctuating emotions of the children, as
facilitators we also faced the dilemma whether to let
the parents be with the children or to ask them to
leave the children with us…
• How to make parents understand that their own state
of being, their own anxiety and impatience are
impacting the child…
• How to make parents understand the fact that our
repetition of the same kind of activities is helping the
children by giving them emotional support and a sense
of security…

26. Reflection…
 After experiencing a very strong
bout of anxiety in the parents, we as
teachers felt uncomfortable and
unfocused, hence, we decided to
settle their anxiety first before
settling their children…
We did relate with parents’ emotions
but we had to take action…

27. Action taken…
We had individual meetings and addressed the parents’
anxiety one-to-one, explaining our approach and the reason
for our actions.
Seeing that their being in the school was not helping them as
they were getting influenced by other parents’ anxiety - nor
was it helping the child as the child was getting influenced by
the parents’ anxiety, we asked the parents to move away
from the school campus, even if the child cried.
And this action of ours helped us to gather our energy and
take the group forward…

28. July 3rd and 4th Week
When we observed that the children had partially
settled in the group we took our first topic I Love
Animals to explore with the children.
Aims:
 To develop the faculty of observation
 To help children to identify animals through their
sounds
Aims for ourselves:
 Without pressurising and curbing the interests of the
children – helping them to come together as a group

29. Scribbling with sticks
Activities such as…

30. Getting ready to visit the stables

31. Going for Nature walk

32. Water play in the Sand-pit

33. Story telling in the sand-pit

34. Playing basket ball

35. Learning to crawl on the ladder

36. General conversation with peers

37. Our Observations & Reflection…
 Children loved exploring every activity with us outdoors.
 Children loved singing and dancing and playing with animal
toys.
 Children loved listening to the stories but did not like sitting
indoors… the story telling would happen spontaneously either
in the sand-pit area or in the play ground…
 Even though children enjoyed exploring this theme, they
were not ready to mingle with their peer group.

38. August 2nd and 3rd week
Observing the group’s need we focused on the theme
Me and My friends with the following aims:
Aims:
 Helping children to mingle with their peer group and
enjoy working together
 Helping children to develop the quality of sharing and
helping each other

39. Helping a friend to solve puzzles
Activities such as…

40. Scribbling on the chalk board together

41. Sorting Rajma and Chana

42. Painting together

43. Sharing try-cycleSharing tri-cycle

44. Cheering for friends to complete the round

45.  We provided a lot of group activities so that children
could mingle with each other and start interacting
within themselves.
By the end of the theme we could see that most of
the children had learnt each other’s names and had
started taking initiative to exchange their thoughts,
sharing and helping…
Our Observations & Reflection…

46. At Present… September
 Children have developed a good bonding with Didis and
have started expressing their feelings with them…
 The group is now ready to follow short instructions…
 Is enjoying more group games…
 Ready to explore new challenges…
 The children are learning and developing their fine
and gross motor skills…
 Now children also show better concentration while
exploring different activities… 

47. Following instructions of the game
Glimpses from the present…

48. Picture reading for their friends

49. Learning to hold paint brush correctly

50. Learning to hold scissors

51. Crawling on the Monkey-bar

52. Playing group games

53. Celebrating Janmashtami

54. Now the group represents
Happy Explorers…