The centre includes an 'anti-bullying' programme called 'Seeds of Empathy'. A family in the community volunteers to bring in their young baby for the year once per week to share the care and tender moments with the children in the centre. The teachers are trained to teach it - sounds a bit like the way the 'Incredible Years' is organised although it is a very different programme. Centres can't 'just do the programme'.
These are the themes of the programme:
Here they are tracking the baby's growth
Representing it here in a graph....stretching the programme to include mathematics learning and graphs
Then something beautiful happened....a young child was sitting on the knee of a teacher on the floor being comforted on his first day...he needed the undivided attention he was receiving to find some calm as he worked through how he was feeling. His sister heard him from the adjoined room and was looking over the low gate at him to check in. I commented to Mary Lynne 'I wonder if they will bring her in to help comfort her brother?' and Mary Lynne replied 'We'll have to wait and see'. Sure enough, we turned around and Jodie was walking over to the young child and teacher with the big sister. It was such a beautiful moment that it bought tears to my eyes! Talk about congruency - taking me through the 'Seeds of Empathy' programme and then we see this happening. I took photos of this moment and will only share them if the family give consent. It worked too!!
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