GEKA Bentleigh East

Building Confidence in Children after COVID-19

Helen Tselios, Early Childhood Educator

Reflecting over the past two years, it has been observed that the children’s education has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their ability to socialise and learn in an engaging environment has been limited. As teachers and educators, we have observed that children have struggled to concentrate and are challenged to work productively as part of a team. 

Parents were forced to balance working from home with assisting their children with remote learning,  which wasn’t always efficient. This added stress onto parents, and may have made it challenging to focus on the learning support needed, for children to engage. 

The children’s ability to socialise has been impacted being in lockdown.  Many children began attending kindergarten again after the restrictions eased, but the lack of socialisation over the last few months has really been evident in children's play.

Our GEKA kindergartens continued to operate throughout the pandemic, but only few children could attend. We would hold weekly zoom meetings for those who were unable to come. Over the last few years, we’ve started to notice some of the benefits of zoom meetings, not only for the children, but the staff too. It gives everyone the opportunity to interact and have contact throughout these difficult times. 

It was also wonderful that we were able to maintain and provide quality resources to children and families throughout the pandemic.  When restrictions finally eased up, we also had lots of resources and materials prepared for the children to engage them and help them learn. 

Many families would have experienced all sorts of stresses throughout the lockdowns, and this tends to have an impact on young children. Moving forward, we think it would be beneficial to teach children how to understand and recognise different feelings and offer them support to express their emotions either verbally or through art and play. We aim to have a peaceful and harmonious learning spaces and teach the children the concept of gratitude and how to spread kindness.

Many young children are now managing anxiety and separation issues, more than ever before. They are also more worried about hygiene and tend to spend more time washing their hands and have a fear of getting dirty outside. The lockdown has hidden them from the real world and they have a new perception of how to interact with the world around them. They have missed out on many essential opportunities to socialise and get human contact.

It has been wonderful that this year we are able to welcome families back into the service. They were a bit hesitant at first, but we have been encouraging them to come in and spend time at kindergarten with their child. The atmosphere in the kindergarten is much more relaxed now (despite needing to still wear masks and complete regular handwashing) and we are seeing much more laughter, smiles, and hugs. The children are also more eager to learn.

We still see a few hints of the impact of COVID showing in the children’s behaviour. We decided to ask them what they think it means to have COVID, and this is how they responded:

Child 1 – “It means you can’t go out anywhere, and you got to stay home all the time”.

Child 2 – “You can’t come to kinder.”

Child 3 – “You get sick and stay home.”

Child 4 – “You’ve got to stay away from people and wash your hands lots, I was sad because we couldn’t even go to see our grandparents.”

This is what the children understand about COVID.  We are mindful of and monitoring the possible impacts and delays to sensory processing due to living in a world where they have been taught to fear germs.

This year’s families have been very anxious about their children’s social and emotional development. They have identified that their child does not know how to approach or engage in play with their peers. Over the last few years, there have been many children who have not attended a formal education setting. As teachers and educators, we ensure that we try our hardest to prevent this group of children from feeling this way, and prepare them for the transition to school. We plan to do this by: encouraging them to engage in outdoor experiences, take them on excursions and outings, teach them the importance of physical and social health, and provide resources to help them reduce anxiety and stress. This is a priority of ours. 

How else are we adapting our teaching practices at GEKA Bentleigh East Kindergarten?

• We need to ensure our programs remain flexible and we are able to adapt to the current environment. We need to be able to move to online immediately and without delay if we are going to go into lockdown again.
• Our programs also need to remain flexible so that children feel in control and confident to decipher the direction of their learning journey. The past two years have been out of control for the children, so it is providing them with the ability to control something in their lives and make their own choices. This will build confidence and will ensure they also feel comfortable and capable.
• We need to spend time assisting the children to develop their social and emotional skills. Due to the amount of lockdowns, there would have been little opportunities for children to achieve this. Implementing the resilience project that we do at GEKA will assist in this process.
• We need to support families at home who are in isolation and ensure the children’s learning can continue from afar.
• We need to focus on the children’s strengths and build our curriculum around this. We want the children to build a love for learning and build confidence.
• We need to be engaged and be present for the children.
• We need to possibly reassure families more than previous years. The families have a lot of anxieties about their child’s development and social awareness after being out of education settings. So it is increasing our level of communication with families to share information about their children and how they are progressing.

The teachers and educators here at GEKA Bentleigh East Kindergarten, have recognised this and we are available to answer any questions or provide assistance to any families who attend our services and have a child that has been negatively affected by the pandemic.