Activity 3-4:
Children Learn by Doing

Purpose: In this activity, participants will reflect on their own routines, consider how their personal experiences are related to the children's, and discuss how they can support children's development during routines and transitions.

Outcomes:
Participants use a flexible approach to routines and transitions that reflects a child's skills and needs and is altered when necessary to respond to changing needs and growing skills.

Participants adapt the schedule, routines, and transitions to meet a child's individual needs.

Materials:
Chart paper, markers, tape
Handout 13: It's Breakfast Time!
Handout 14: Answer Key: It's Breakfast Time!

1. Explain to participants that this activity will help them learn how to use routines and transitions as opportunities to support children's development of skills in all developmental domains-at home, at a center, and during a group socialization session.

2. Ask participants to relax, close their eyes, and think about what they do on a typical weekday morning. In this guided imagery, use prompts such as the following:

You just woke up. What time is it? How do you feel? Are you ready to get out of bed?

What do you do first? Shower? Get dressed? Eat breakfast? Wake up another family member?

Besides getting yourself ready, what else do you have to do? Put a load of wash in the machine? Start dinner? Feed the cat? Make lunches?

You are now ready to leave for work. Do you have everything? Are you on time? Late?

How do you feel? Relaxed? Eager? Looking forward to the day? Tired? Grumpy? Rushed?

End the guided imagery by gently bringing the participants back to the present.

3. Ask participants what they do to make their morning routines go smoothly. Participants might come up with comments such as:

I make my children's lunches the night before.
I set the alarm ten minutes earlier than I really need to get up.
I set out my clothes the night before.
I delegate some jobs to other family members.

Point out that these activities are part of their plan for carrying out routines. Similar plans are needed to make sure children's routines and transitions go smoothly.

Ask participants to use adjectives (calm, organized, happy) to describe how they feel when the morning routine goes smoothly. List the adjectives on one side of a piece of chart paper.

Next, ask participants to think about how they feel.When their morning routines fail to go as planned. For example, the alarm does not go off, the zipper breaks on the pants they planned to wear, someone used all the hot water so they cannot shower, the car refuses to start. On the other side of the chart paper, list the adjectives (hassled, rushed, disorganized) that describe these feelings.

Discuss how the positive adjectives can also describe how children feel when routines are well-planned, consistent, and predictable; discuss how the negative adjectives might also describe how children feel when routines are changed or disrupted.

4. Ask participants to read the vignette in Handout 13: It's Breakfast Time! Discuss how this Head Start program's approach to completing routines and transitions supports children's development because it is well-planned, consistent, and predictable. Use the questions in the handout to focus the discussion. Distribute Handout 14: Answer Key: It's Breakfast Time! and discuss any responses that differ from those that you and the participants came up with.

5. Ask participants to share something they plan to do differently so that routines and transitions involve children and encourage their development at home, at the center, and during group socialization sessions.