Children are naturally very curious creatures. They love to explore, discover and learn new things everyday. They will capitalise on any opportunity to expand their knowledge and enhance their skill sets.
Children enjoy being in environment that allows them to challenge their own problem skills - attempting to solve problems presented to them by learning from past mistakes and building upon past successes, sometimes even attempting tasks which sometimes are seemingly too "big" for them.
Daycare teachers should take advantage of this trait and cultivate their motivation to explore, succeed, understand (Piaget, 1978) and harness knowledge.
Role of A Daycare Teacher
Let's explore how a daycare teacher can take advantage of a child's fascination with everything new and seemingly exciting to motivate and enrich their learning.
By providing a very complex problem in the hope that the child will reach a higher level of learning is definitely not realistic. It’ll not only frustrate the child, the child will deem learning as an impossible task and dread it rather than as a challenge to be overcome.
A daycare teacher can aid the child to maximise a problem solving situation by providing the child with the appropriate support or scaffolds. The daycare teacher should aim to provide the child with interesting and challenging but age appropriate problems for the child to solve. The problem should generate interest in the child about the activity whilst at the same time, maintaining the element of challenge in the task.
The daycare teacher should also be prepared to manage a child’s frustration or emotion which he may exhibit in trying to complete the task. To aid the child, the daycare teacher can try to simplify the tasks required and/or encourage him to explore the “ideal” path / process towards solving the problem. At each step of the way, the daycare teacher should offer praises and encourage the child the move on to the next step towards solving the problem.
After the child has completed all the task, the daycare teacher should take time to do a quick re-cap of what had happened. In doing so, not only is the daycare teacher teaching the child the value of perseverance but showing them that with a little resolve, even mammoth tasks can be solved.
