Supporting the Development of Social-Emotional Skills in 4–6-year-old Children in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

Abstract

This is a development-based thesis aimed to create a short and simple-to-follow guide on Supporting the Development of Social-Emotional Skills in 4–6-year-old Children in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) for educators and ECEC social pedagogues.

The guide itself is an infographic, or guide, containing of 3 pages, including Background information on the topic, Emotion skills and Friendship skills. Social-emotional skills help children recognize and manage emotions, enhancing friendships and self-control (Avola & Pentikäinen, 2020). This thesis provides the theoretical background and additional details on the implementation of the guide. The guide includes 3 ways of implementation being Role-play, Storytelling and Emotion cards.

This thesis was done in cooperation with a private daycare named Ankkalampi, where Ankkalampi was to implement the guide in their social-emotional skill sessions. A feedback questionnaire on the guide was sent to Ankkalampi to gain further insides on the usefulness on the guide. While there is a lot of existing information on this topic already, there is a lack of simplified guides. This was justified by professionals at Ankkalampi, as well as the preliminary questionnaire created by Paulasaari titled “The Need for Clearer Guidelines for Social-Emotional Skill Lessons (Tunnetaitotuokio) in ECEC in Uusimaa”.

The guide received positive feedback and was regarded as a valuable resource for early childhood educators and ECEC social pedagogues, offering straightforward strategies to cultivate emotional awareness and friendship skills, both essential for children's long-term success in social settings.

Keywords: Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), Social-Emotional development, Social-Emotional skills, Friendship skills, Development-based thesis, Storytelling, Emotion cards, Roleplay