Parent Education Activity Information Hub

Topic

             “Culturing children’s motivation to learn – Parents’ talk” and

“Learning Through Play - Parent-Child Activity"

Objectives

• To facilitate parents to understand early childhood learning patterns.
• To let parents and children to experience various home-based games
• To cultivate children's curiosity and self-care abilities, enhancing their proactive learning.

Details

• Throughout the growth process, parents always aspire to nurture their children effectively. How can parents facilitate children to learn effectively? This series of parent talk and parent-child activity will help parents understand how to "learn through play," promoting children's development through daily interactions.

  Children primarily learn through "senses," "hands-on activities," and "play." Their natural curiosity can be enhanced with guidance and praise from parents, helping them build a sense of achievement that fosters "active learning."

Introduction to Home-Based Games:

• During the games, parents are encouraged to praise and affirm their children's efforts, using phrases that build confidence, such as "You know how to..." and "You observed that..." to motivate children to try new things and learn.

Topic

                Parents’ workshop on Family Sexuality Education

Objectives

• Parents are able to learn the strategies of educating their children about the physiological differences between both sexes; dealing with their children’s sexual curiosity; indoctrinating the correct values about sex and enhance the awareness of self-protection.
• Enhance parents’ skills and confident in conducting Family Sexuality Education

Details

• Parents may have a lot of questions regarding family sexuality education, such as how to respond to sex-related questions such as "where do I come from?".  This workshop will explain the stages of children's psychosexual development to assist parents in carrying out sexuality education in different stages; share skills and attitudes to deal with children's sexual curiosity, so that parents can educate their children on the correct knowledge of sexuality from an early age.

Four skills to respond to children’s sex-related questions

Skill one: Attentive listening

• Understand meaning behind questions

• Show concern and build-up trust

Skill two: Proper attitude

• Openness
• Encourage questioning

Skill three: Define question(s)

• Clarify the information, confirm the rationale behind the questions

Skill four: Responding skills

• Provide instant, simple answer
• Use the accurate, proper name of sexuality education
• Respond according to the child’s developmental stages
• Make use of teaching materials

Topic

                Parent-child learn together: Emotional workshop

Objectives

• Understand different emotions, e.g., joy, sadness, anger, fear.
• Parent-child making emotional handcraft jointly (emotional spinning cups or emotional thermometers) to facilitate children to learn emotional expression by verbal and non-verbal languages

Details

The workshop assists child and parents to understand different emotions and express in a positive way, with the use of picture books and games. When facing children's emotional issues, parents can try to respond with the following five tips to guide their children to regulate their emotions and solve problems, so as to promote their psychological health in long term.

5 skills of responding to children’ emotions

Skill one: Be aware of emotional changes of your child and yourself

Skill two: Shift your perspective to consider the issue as a chance to educate your child

Skill three: Active listening with empathy, understand and accept your child's feelings

Skill four: Assist your child to express emotions/feelings in words

Skill five: Set limits and solve problems with your child

Topic

              Gently coping with children’s confrontational behaviors: parents’ workshop

Objectives

• Parents can understand the development needs of children
• Parents can learn the strategies to cope with children’s confrontational behaviors

Details

Having confrontational behaviors, such as refusing to follow adults’ instructions and liking to argue with adults, is common in children’s development. And it is not easy for parents to handle. This workshop aims at working with parents to understand the developmental needs of children and the causes behind confrontational behavior, so that parents can strengthen their parenting skills in handling confrontational behaviors, thereby reducing parents' parenting pressure and improving the parent-child relationship in long term.

Skills to cope with children’s confrontational behaviors

Topic

               Happy enrollment: Parents’ talk on supporting children in school adjustment

Objectives

• Parents can understand the changes that their children face when they first admit to kindergarten or nursery, and equip with skills to support them in the adjustment period
• Parents can understand more about home safety

Details

Facing the changes in the environment and separation with caregivers when first admitted to school, each child’s has different adaptation progress and needs, and it is easy for them to have emotions. This workshop mainly facilitates parents to understand the challenges face by children during school admission. Parents can equip with skills to prepare their children for going to school, and deal with separation, striving to support families in adapting to the new stage easily.

Physiological aspects

• Develop a regular schedule, such as a predictable daily routine
• Try more sedentary activities
• Cultivate children’s self-care skills

Psychological aspects

• Develop positive separation experiences
• Use of picture books and puppets to assist children in school adaptation and simulate the separation from parents.
• Use of encouraging wordings to assist children in developing a positive impression of going to school

Topic

                          “LEGO Six Bricks” Parent-child Workshop: The Skill of Appreciation

Objectives

•  Parents can learn the skill of appreciation: immediate, genuine and accurate

• Parents and children can communicate with each other through games and enhance their parent-child relationship

Details

Six bricks have six different colors. Parents and children have fun in the games. This workshop mainly introduces the skills of the skill of appreciation (immediate, genuine and accurate). Through language to appreciate children, they are willing to repeat good behavior.

The Skills of Appreciation

Immediate:

Praise your child immediately when he or she does something good

Genuine:

The facial expressions and words should be consistent. Worship the children with a smile and sincere attitude.

Accurate:

Clearly and specifically describe what the child did well

Example: Lily, you are so good (genuine)! You share toys (accurate) with your children today (immediate).

The benefits of appreciation:

• Improve self-esteem
• Increase good behavior
• Show permission

Are We Spoiling Our Kids with Too Much Praise?

• A child who is often praised will...
• Can build confidence to explore and learn
• When self is affirmed, his sense of self-esteem will be stronger

Highlights

Topic

                          Storytelling PaMa Workshop - Storytelling Skills

Objectives

•  Parents can learn to choose a book and storytelling Skills
•  Parents can practice the skills learned and increase their confidence in storytelling

Details

Our school organizes the " Storytelling PaMa " volunteer service. We invite parents to tell stories for our students. We hope to bring children joy and cultivate the fun of reading.

This workshop invited the Hans Andersen Club to hold " Storytelling PaMa " storytelling skills talk for parents, including understanding interactive storytelling skills, book appreciation and application, and how to choose books, so as to encourage parents to enhance parent-child relationship through story times.

The Skills of Storytelling Skills

Skill 1: Preparation

Parents should read the story several times before telling their children, so that they can understand the plot of the story and the characteristics of the characters. Before telling a story, it is advisable to choose a quiet and comfortable environment. Parents can arrange a suitable and fixed story time according to the individual situation and needs of the child, for example: before going to bed, provide a relaxing and pleasant story time. A fixed time helps parents and children to develop reading habit.

Skill 2: View the cover of the book

Parents can view the cover of books with their children, arousing their curiosity about the story and interest in reading.

Skill 3:Action expression

When parents tell stories to their children, they should avoid using a bland, boring tone or just tell children directly from the book. This is not only unattractive, but also prevents children from feeling the joy of reading. Also, parents can match with appropriate actions, facial expressions and intonation according to the needs of the plot and characters, so that the children can fully participate in reading. Moreover, please pay attention to avoid emphasizing too many different emotional words in the same story, which confuses children. Parents can emphasize some basic emotions or feelings, such as: happy or unhappy.

How to choose books

Parents may consider choosing books from the following three themes:

1) Daily self-care:

Through the content of the story, children can be taught to master the concepts of self-care, such as bathing, sleeping, going to the toilet, etc.

2) Knowledge Enlightenment:

Children learn some abstract concepts, such as up and down, size, length, and even color, shape, mathematical concepts, etc. These books can focus on guiding children to learn certain concepts and increase children's motivation to learn knowledge.

3) Ideological and moral education:

Children interact with different people in school, which help to nurturing virtues and values. In addition, parents can teach children values through ideological and moral education books.

Highlights

Topic

"Let’s take a deep breath and calm down" Parent-child Workshop -

Emotional Traffic Light Principle

Objectives

•  Parents can learn to use emotional traffic light as a tool to manage emotions

• Children can learn to calm down with mindful breathing games

Details

Mostly, the emotions of parents are easily affected when dealing with children's misbehavior. When emotions become high, we need to stop and think.

This workshop mainly introduces the principle of Emotional Traffic Light. It helps to control emotions and avoid to hurt children. By calming yourself and reflect on the reasons behind the things you feel angry. For example, practice mindful breathing. After calming down, parents can solve and deal with the current problems with their children.

Use emotional traffic light as a tool to manage emotions

Through briefings and videos, staff explain to parents how to deal with emotions under the "Emotional Traffic Light".

Red light - Stop: Take deep breaths and try to calm down

When parents feel angry, they should stop and avoid direct eye contact with their children at once. Try to take a deep breath, drink water, or wash your face to calm down. Avoid out of control behaviors, such as “pushing, hitting the table, throwing things...”.  Please allow yourself to leave for a while and be quiet.

Yellow Lights - Reflect: Find a quiet spaces

When parents calm down, give yourself a quiet space and reflect. Try to find out the reasons behind such as "Why are you so angry?", "Is anger useful?", "Does a child's disobedience mean that I am useless?" Why children have responses like that?” Remember to avoid think negatively or catastrophize the current situation. Come up with some positive and effective ways to solve the problem.

Green light - Go: Reconnect with children

Respect is very important when communicate with children. Firstly, parents try to understand the difficulties of their children. Let children express feelings and thoughts. Then, parents respond to their feelings.

Highlights

Topic

"Always In A Good Mood" Parent-child Workshop - Emotional Response Skills

Objectives

• Learn how to recognize and respond to children’s emotions
• Understand how to calm down by making a magic bottle
• Children can recognize and express four emotions (happy, unhappy, angry and afraid) through games

Details

Parents may have many questions about their children's emotional problems. For example, "Should boys not cry?", "Should I stop my children when they feel angry?", etc.  Feelings are not right or wrong, but it's important that children learn to express their emotions appropriately. This workshop mainly introduces the skills of Acknowledge feeling (ACT Model). By expressing their feelings or thoughts, children feel supported and accepted. They are more willing to express their feelings and needs in an appropriate way.

The Skills of Acknowledge Feeling

Parents can actively listen to their children, without judging whether the behavior is right or wrong. When children feel understood, they can calm down more easily. By responding to the child's feelings or thoughts, children feel safe and comfortable.

Example:

Nana came home after school, she felt angry. She said to her mother excitedly: 'Mom, Mandy didn't play with me, I hate her! '

Highlights

Topic

“Tabletop Game for Love Languages” - Parents’ Workshop on Physical Touch

Objectives

• Share the communication skills of “Five Love Languages” to strengthen parent-child relationship
• Introduce to parents a variety of fun tabletop games for them to experience the enjoyment

Details

Everyone has the need to love and be loved, but different people will habitually express and receive love messages through different ways, which is the “language of love”.  Every child has an emotional box, a place from where s/he can have replenishment of emotional strength so that s/he can survive the challenges encountered during childhood and adolescence.  Adults fill children’s emotional boxes with unconditional love, which can give children a sense of security and hope.  Let’s learn together how to use the language of love to fill children’s “Love Box”.

Highlights