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At Huili Nursery Hangzhou, wellbeing is a state of being and the ability to flourish. We mainly assess children’s wellbeing and involvement through the Leuven Scale. Dr. Ferre Laevers is the creator of the Leuven and celebrated as a pioneer in experimental education, at the University of Leuven in Belgium. We aim to improve children’s wellbeing and involvement through modern research-based approaches, which ultimately enhances the provision we provide our children, the environment they seek out opportunities and the quality of our practice.
Children with high wellbeing represent a state of enjoyment, relaxation, energy, openness, confidence and strong in the ability to form relationships with others. To sum it up in one short sentence children with high wellbeing engage with learning like a fish to water. High wellbeing contributes to the healthy development of children’s mindset, enables children to establish positive interpersonal relationships, helps children improve their confidence, self-efficacy, resilience, and is also conducive to expand and construct children’s positive outlook at and problem solving skills.
Children with high involvement are focused and not easily interrupted. They are full of energy and motivated. They are driven by curiosity and eagerness. High involvement is also an important sign for deep learning, which is closely linked to the characteristics of efficient learning in our curriculum.
At the beginning and end of each semester, children are assessed on their levels of wellbeing and involvement. But this is not the only time we assess children on their wellbeing. We continuously support the development of high levels in our children’s wellbeing and involvement through our daily observations, reflections and teaching plans. If a child with low wellbeing or low involvement is identified an individual learning plan is created and to better enhance opportunities, routines and inspirations for that individual child. This active approach is communicated with families to support each individual child as a community and holistically.
The Leuven Scale is not only a tool to measure children’s wellbeing and involvement, but also an important tool to help teachers reflect and improve on their own practice. By observing children’s wellbeing and involvement in different areas, we are able to determine areas for further development where individual children often show low levels of wellbeing and involvement ,areas are then redesigned, constructed and routines put in place to be responsive to individual children’s wellbeing and need for personal social aspirations.
In an environment full of empathy and inclusiveness, our children will always feel warm and powerful. Our children are always bravely exploring the world through a supportive environment, like a fish to water.
In EY1 we have started phase 1 of our project on oceans and sea creatures. Our project approach is to discover what children already know and what they may wish to learn about. We build our project based on their interests and fascinations, adapting our teaching and learning environment to enable their learning to develop. This week has seen the children particularly interested in sharks. We have been looking at their features and naming them such as tail, fin and gills.
At Huili Nursery friendships are an important part of early childhood education. Friendships developed at this time give children valuable opportunities in which they can learn, and practice skills related to social, cognitive, communicative, and emotional development.
Friendships enable children to learn more about themselves and develop their own identity. It is truly wonderful to see children who were in the same class last year continue to talk to their peers and previous teacher when they see them around the Huili Nursery campus.
In EY3 children have been engaging in maths through the provisions and invitations within their environment. Children expressed their understanding of shape by sorting and matching 2D shapes onto a ladybird, some children counted the sides of each shape, noting that some shapes had the same number of sides, but some had only 1 side. Children also compared the 2D shapes to 3D cubes, cylinders, pyramids, and prisms noticing that the 2D shapes matched the faces of the 3D shapes. Through this children could also see and learn the English and Chinese names of the shapes as well as continue to develop their sorting skills through differentiation of each shape.
I am very happy to share the current project research of EY4U children with you-dream.
One morning, when we were having a discussion on birthdays, children were fascinated about dreams for their future. Some wanted to be pilots, some preferred to be a policeman, some would like to open 4 factories, some dreamed to be a very famous writer and some planned to have a clothing store. Then, in an open, enthusiastic, dynamic, rich and free class environment, every child voted to make a decision on whose dream should come true.
During the activity, children made full use of their five senses. The high-quality dialogues among them back and forth were as natural as playing with toys. Let us take a look at the children’s learning experience and share their gains and happiness.
