Practicum Placement Analysis

Birth to three is an amazing period in a young child’s life, full of developmental growth and change. During this time infants and toddlers make tremendous gains in their cognitive, physical, communication, and social emotional development. Humans are social beings, babies included who are born with the innate ability to be “emotional communicators” (Wittmer & Petersen, 2014, p. 111). The area of emotional development includes developing relationship attachments, developing a sense of self, and the ability to understand and regulate one’s emotions. An emotional curriculum along with Feeling Buddies, is a great combination to target better emotional understanding and regulation with young toddlers, ages 2-3. Infants and toddlers develop
While a school readiness and success is often based on communication and cognition, regulation is a strong predictor and correlates with a child’s academic success (Eisenberg, Valiente, & Eggum, 2010).
Currently, my practicum placement is at an agency that specializes in Social Emotional Learning. Many of the children who attend Social Sparks have a diagnosis or disability that impacts their social and emotional develop such as Anxiety, ADD/ADHD, Autism, and other similar diagnoses. The focal point of all curriculum and activities to help the children better understand their feelings and learn skills to help regulate their emotions helping with the too big too fast reactions often associated with poor regulation and coping strategies. The books read during circle time talk about the challenges of hearing
The Feeling Buddies is a toolkit for both professionals and families developed by Conscious Discipline creator Dr. Becky Bailey. The Feeling Buddies are a group of very plain looking stuffed dolls that look quite like gingerbread men. Each doll as a face depicting an emotion of happy, sad, sacred, angry, frustrated, anxious, calm, and disappointed. For the group of children, I am working with I would only use the dolls related to happy, sad, sacred, and angry. I would use the dolls as a modeling tool for the children. When working on specific emotions I will ask the children to pick up the doll and ask them what the doll is feeling. I would them ask them to talk to the doll and offer the doll comfort. If the child is having a hard time with this exercise, I could ask the child if they wanted to use their own chart to come up with suggestions for their doll. I think the already made posters along with the dolls would enhance a child’s ability to recognize emotions within themselves and others. The Feeling Buddies doll would not be a onetime activity, but a tool built in to all other social emotional learning activities, complete with its own introduction. Feelings Buddies can be a standalone social emotional curriculum, however for the purpose of this course I will be creating an activity