baby Archives | Little Scholars

We believe that if children learn early on how to recognise and regulate their emotions, we’re setting up a future of more empathetic, kind and respectful generation.

It’s so important, in fact, it’s a huge part of our Collective curriculum across all age groups. Our educators incorporate age and development-appropriate emotions learning opportunities throughout the year. Children who learn how to understand emotions in themselves and others are better able to regulate their own responses to strong emotions, helping them to move through that emotion and focus on all the other aspects of their lives!

There’s of course a number of reasons why emotional regulation is important to children’s development and wellbeing.

The early childhood years (o-5) have been identified in numerous studies as a crucial period for the development of important executive functions such as attention, inhibition, working memory, and literacy skills, all that are necessary for successful school transition and later academic success.

Even though this seems important, there hasn’t been much research on how emotion regulation affects young children’s academic performance. But we’ve found a couple of examples that highlight what we feel to be quite important in children’s development. Since academic skills tend to stay fairly stable over time, it’s essential to understand how managing emotions can support a successful start to school, especially in primary school.

Researchers have identified factors such as anxiety, aggression and verbal abilities as challenges that can affect children’s success in school, and furthermore relationships and career. One such study, The Role of Emotion Regulation and Children’s Early Academic Success, looked at how emotional regulation in young children can help with early academic success. Researchers identified that adaptive functioning, which refers to ‘numerous global positive outcomes including normative social, cognitive, and language development as well as the ability to cope with daily living tasks and environmental changes’ can be affected negatively or positively depending on children’s ability to succeed in school.

This particular study also emphasises that transition to school. Children enter a school environment where they are expected to learn important skills like reading, maths, and socialising. At the same time, they may receive less one-on-one support because of larger class sizes and a greater focus on their independence. Adjusting to these new academic and social demands, without the extra support they may have had in an early learning setting, can be challenging for many young children.

Another study, The Development of Self-Regulation across Early Childhood, highlighted that children who learn how to understand emotions in themselves and others are better able to regulate their own responses to strong emotions.

That’s where we come in!

Learning feelings through play

At Little Scholars, we believe helping children recognise and name their emotions is an important first step in developing emotional awareness. This approach is also supported by the Early Years Learning Framework, which encourages children to build a strong sense of identity.

One example from our campuses is the use of a much-loved book, The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas. This story helps children identify different emotions through colours. After reading the book, our educators extend the learning with creative activities that use colour and storytelling as tools for emotional recognition. These experiences help children build healthy emotional responses and support their overall wellbeing.

Our campuses also incorporate songs and affirmations as part of their routines to reinforce children’s understanding of feelings, and help them figure out what works for them in regards to regulating those feelings.

We also actively participate mindfulness activities into our days to help children process and manage big emotions. Along with songs and affirmations, we use our sector-leading Bush Kinder program to get children out into nature, as well as deep breathing exercises, meditation and yoga as helpful ways for children to slow down, reset, and navigate their feelings.

At Little Scholars, our goal is for our services to be a welcoming second home for children where they can focus on learning through play, and our educators to be a source of comfort and trust for these wonderful little people. We offer calming zones both inside our studios and in our outdoor environments to allow children to escape and rest when they need a break.

Our hope is the foundations we’re setting in children’s emotional and social development in those crucial first five years of development can be built upon in all stages of their childhood and beyond.

At Little Scholars, we’re focused on the holistic growth of each child in our care, by helping these small humans grow into kind, empathetic little legends who are ready to take on the big wide world. Book a tour at one of our 17 locations across the Gold Coast, Redlands, Brisbane and soon Ipswich to see how we incorporate social and emotional growth into our learning curriculum!

When to start solids

Most babies show signs of readiness for solids around six months. Look for these cues:

Sitting up with minimal support
Showing interest in your food
Opening their mouth for a spoon or reaching for food
Losing the tongue-thrust reflex (pushing food out of their mouth automatically) Though as babies begin to take in food, this instinct may remain until they get used to it.

How to begin

Whatever way you approach the first tastes, go slow and offer just a couple of teaspoon-sized portions at first. Hand them a spoon to let them hold, though they’ll likely just eat (squish) with their fingers

You can start by offering food once a day alongside their normal amount of breast milk or formula, then work your way up over the coming weeks to three or more feedings a day.

To help babies adjust to the unique tastes of foods, one approach we like starting with vegetables for the first 14 days, one new, iron-rich vegetable each day. This helps develop a taste for nutritious foods before introducing fruit or other sweet flavours, as they’re already accustomed to sweet flavours through formula or breast milk.

Queensland Health recommends including iron-rich foods every day to help baby grow well, such as lean meat and legumes, baby cereal with iron, and green leafy vegetables. Of course, you’ll need to work up to these denser foods. It’s also recommended to introduce nuts into diets soon, as this can help reduce allergies. However please note we do not offer nut products at our campuses.

Purees versus baby-led weaning

We support both traditional purees and baby-led weaning (BLW). Here’s how they differ:

Purees: Smooth textures, spoon-fed by a parent or educator, with gradually thicker consistencies over time.
Baby-led weaning: Soft, whole foods in safe shapes that babies can pick up and feed themselves, encouraging independence and coordination.

Regardless of your approach, always supervise your baby while they eat and offer soft, easy-to-swallow foods. At our campuses, babies are closely supervised during meals and snacks, but we also use these as opportunities to bond, having lots of fun interactions and conversations with our little ones while they eat!

Tips for a smooth transition to food

Offer solids when your baby is alert and in a good mood
Start with small amounts. A teaspoon or two is plenty at first
Encourage exploration. Expect mess, it’s part of the learning process!
Be patient. Some babies take time to adjust to new textures
Watch for allergies. Introduce new foods one at a time, leaving a few days in between common allergens like eggs, dairy, or nuts.

How Little Scholars supports your baby’s journey

At Little Scholars, we help families introduce solids in a way that works for them. Our educators can support your baby with purees or baby-led weaning while ensuring meals are safe, nutritious, and enjoyable. We work closely with families to understand preferences and keep you informed about your baby’s progress.

Starting solids is an exciting step in your baby’s development. With patience, variety, and support, mealtimes can be a wonderful experience for both of you!

We aim to be an extension of your family and are here to support you and your child during those important childhood milestones. If you’re in need of high quality early childhood education for your little ones in South East Queensland, book a tour today.

Resources

Introducing solid food

Guide to foods: Baby’s first year

Baby’s first foods – Queensland Health

Babies are a mysterious bunch. For many months, their main forms of communication are cries, squeaks, gestures and coos. Parents fall madly in love with these little humans without knowing what they’re thinking and feeling, often just guessing at best.

How babies play, how and what they’re learning, and what they’re interested in can be a mystery to many. Many parents have seen their baby pull out every book off a shelf, for example, watch it fall, then grab another, while that parent scratches his or her head and says ‘why?’

There’s an answer. It’s a schema. A schema is both a category of knowledge as well as the process of acquiring that knowledge. In play, babies are often involved in repeated actions or certain behaviours as they explore the world around them and try to find out how things work. Those repetitive actions, such as a baby pulling out book after book, allows a child to practice and construct meaning to something, until they’ve understood that schema. Then they find something else to focus on and lather, rinse, repeat!

As Yvette, educational lead from our Burleigh campus says, it’s children’s development making sense.

“All of those little things that you see children do that seem a bit cute, or frustrating even, like throwing, it’s a schema, a child’s pathway of development for making sense of the world,” Yvette says.

The repetitive action of a schema allows a child to practice and construct meaning until they have mastered the understanding of the schema. Being aware of play schemas helps in two ways:

It helps parents and educators to differentiate between ‘behaviour’ vs ‘natural urges’ which move past the belief that a child is just being ‘difficult’
It helps parents and educators to plan learning environments that support the development and mastery of schemas

There are a number of types of schemas when it comes to babies.

Trajectory schema – The trajectory schema is one of the earliest schemas observed in babies. They are fascinated with how they, and objects move. Children will often throw objects or food from their pram or highchair. They climb and jump in puddles and enjoy exploring running water.

Transporting schema – Little ones enjoy repeatedly moving resources around, from one place to another. They will carry many items at a time using their hands, pockets, containers,
baskets, bags, or anything else that will hold their newfound treasures.

Enclosing schema – Children show an interest in enclosed spaces. They may want to sit (and hide in) boxes or laundry baskets. Or they may show interest constructing fences and barricades to enclose toy animals or themselves.

Rotational schema – Children showing a rotational schema may display a preference for turning taps on and off, winding and unwinding string, and playing with
hoops. They may also be fascinated with the physical experience of twirling and twisting their body, spinning around on the spot, or rolling themselves down a hill. They have an interest in things that turn, such as wheels and windmills. They enjoy rolling tyres around, turning lids and watching the washing machine on a spin cycle.

Enveloping schema – Children with an enveloping schema are interested in covering and hiding items, including themselves. They will enjoy dressing up, and filling and emptying bags and containers with different objects.

Connecting schema – Children displaying the connecting schema want to join items together. They find resources like string to tie things. They connect and disconnect toys such as rail tracks.
They enjoy construction toys, and doing arts and crafts where they can glue and stick pieces together.

Orientation schema – Children like to turn objects and themselves around and upside down, to get a view from under the table or from the branch of a tree. They may bend over and look at the world backwards through their legs. They enjoy seeing things from a different view when exploring using cardboard tubes, binoculars or a magnifying glass.

By adapting this theory, we have been able to slow down and become more in tune to the children and noticing their behaviour patterns in play. It is now so important to us that we allow our babies and young children the time to explore the repetitive actions of schematic play.

-Jodie, lead educator

Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget was one of the first to use the term “schema” back in 1923. Piaget was an important child development theorist and his Theory of Cognitive Development was and still is read and followed today by early childhood specialists. He was one of the first who believed children think differently than adults and that they have an innate desire to learn and actively build up their knowledge about the world. They are not passive creatures waiting for someone to teach them.

Susan, our group pedagogical leader, is bringing her schema knowledge across our campuses to the lead educators in the nursery and toddler studios in 2023. Learn a bit more below about how we use schema theory, and how one educator has taken it on in her nursery.

Schematic Pedagogy

Through our collective curriculum, our educators are guided through a ‘schematic lens’, meaning they can plan for children’s thinking, not just activities. This has a strong link to our Collective Curriculum, our educational program for children.

The learning environment

Our educators apply teaching methodologies to design their play spaces and are intentional in the resources offered.

Observing and planning for children’s thinking

Through our collective curriculum, our educators observe the children through their play, to determine schemas explored through the children’s engagement to an activity or resource. Through observing patterns of learning, our trained educators can plan forward to scaffold their cognitive capabilities.

Partnering with children in play

Through ongoing mentoring and coaching, our educators are able use their knowledge of schemas and plan effectively. Our educators are encouraged to partner with children in their play and observe behaviours explored through schemas.

“Schemas are an intrinsic part of child development, knowledge to schemas provide our team of educators an opportunity to identify and encourage independence in children as they explore patterns of movement, often related to schemas,” Susan says. “Supporting assessing through a schematic lens, provides our educators with a framework which can be used to analyse children’s learning, supporting the planning process within our curriculum.”

Educator Q&A

You may be wondering if you have a baby or a small toddler in one of our campuses, how we use schemas to help their development. We talked to one of the educators at our Deception Bay campus about using schemas for educational programming. Deception Bay Little Scholars was recently rated as Exceeding the National Quality Standard (NQS) after it was assessed by the Department of Education. The NQS sets a high national benchmark for early childhood education and care in Australia. Jodie, lead educator in the nursery studio, says learning about schemas was a game-changer.

Q: When did you first learn about schemas?
A: I first heard about schematic play by attending a professional development webinar with Semann & Slattery. It resonated with me as I had observed children engage in the different schemas, but didn’t know about schematic play. I found it so intriguing and needed to do more research. I found Jean Piaget’s psychology theory; “while a schema in psychology still refers to how information is organized, it focuses on how the human mind does it”. I have now learnt the what, why and how children learn through repeated patterns of behaviour.
Q: How long have you worked with nursery children? What were your interactions like before?
A: I have worked in the industry coming up to 14 years and only in the past four years, I have engaged in a more full-time educating role with the nursery and toddler-aged children. Prior to this, I struggled with understanding this age group on the emphasis of what, why and how this age group do things so differently, developmentally, and emotionally. Especially toddlers as they are so spontaneous and busy, and how I could best support them as an educator. It wasn’t until I had my second child, who was so vastly different to my first child! She was much more inquisitive, very busy and just like a little tornado ripping through the house. She was never content until she had everything out on the floor! For the most part she never sat and engaged with her toys, (like my first child did). However, could sit very quietly and go unnoticed at times, especially when she would discover the creams on the change table, or the dirt and mud in the backyard while I hung out the washing.
[After learning about schema theory] I was able to resonate with this from my daughter’s tornado toddler years. That it seemed she wasn’t content until she had gone around and pulled everything out, to not even play with any of it, but just move it from place to place. When in fact she was learning! She was learning about horizontal trajectory (dropping objects), vertical trajectory (throwing, pulling, pushing, pointing, climbing) and transporting (moving objects from place to place).
Q: How has your knowledge of schemas adjusted how you spend time with babies and toddlers?
A: With the support and guidance from Susan, I have since adapted Jean Piaget’s schema theory into our collective educational program. By adapting this theory, we have been able to slow down and become more in tune to the children and noticing their behaviour patterns in play. It is now so important to us that we allow our babies and young children the time to explore the repetitive actions of schematic play. Allowing our babies to construct meaning in what they are doing, as babies and young children learn best through, opportunities to engage in active learning through hands on experiences. These opportunities allow babies and children to problem solve, question, predict, imagine, speculate, and develop independent choices as they make decisions in an area, they are familiar with.
Q: How do you see schema theory in action in your nursery?
A: Our younger babies spend a lot of their time engaging in trajectory play. They can be observed doing tummy time, reaching out for objects, kicking their legs, opening and closing their hands, grasping objects, waving arms up and down or side to side. Then onto rolling, sitting, and crawling where their patterns of movement emerge to larger body movements in horizontal and vertical lines e.g., pushing, kicking pointing, rocking, climbing, or stepping up and down as they work towards their important milestone of walking (horizontal trajectory).

Both our younger babies and older babies really enjoy dropping objects or putting things in and out of containers (vertical trajectory). Using old formula tins and cutting an opening in the top with lids from jar foods a milk bottle lids, is a big favourite.

Our older babies are seen continuing with trajectory and begin to start exploring other forms of schematic play like, transporting, rotation, connecting and this can lead to a disconnecting schema where the child builds something that they can demolish or through [activities like] untying knots, as well as enclosing, positioning, enveloping and orientation, such as looking at things from different viewpoints like hanging upside down, looking through their legs, looking at things upside down. No wonder our little people are so busy and on the go all the time!

Thanks, Jodie!