Browsing by Subject "lapsen mielen hyvinvointi"

Objectives. Nowadays children live in an information filled, stressful, and constantly changing world. Therefore, effective coping skills should be emphasized in education of children to ensure their healthy and balanced development. The aim of The Fun Friends program is to offer tools to educational professionals to contribute to the mental wellbeing of children, for example, enhancing their self-regulation skills. The purpose of this study was to find out how early childhood education teachers experience implementing the Fun Friends program with children aged between four and six. Commitment and attitude of early childhood education teachers to Fun Friends program and teaching the social and emotional skills were surveyed by researching their experiences. In addition, the aim was to examine how the early childhood professionals benefited from introducing the program. Methods. Four early childhood education teachers were interviewed for this research. They worked in public day care centres from three different cities. The interviewees were trained for introducing the Fun Friends program and the training was carried out by Aseman Lapset ry. The research material was collected with semi-structured thematic interviews. The data was analysed by qualitative content analysis with theory guided approach. Results and conclusions. According to the research all the interviewees had an understanding of the significance of the social and emotional skills in different sectors in children's lives. The results showed the interviewees were committed to implementing the Fun Friends program as small group activities. Regardless, the active, positive, and planned actions, transferring the content outside the small group meetings was rather weak amongst the interviewees. The results indicated that the comprehensiveness in the practise of the skills should be emphasized even more in the training of the program. By doing this the content wouldn't be restricted only to the small group meetings organised once a week. The interviewees informed they also benefited from the Fun Friends program professionally. For example, they improved the knowledge of the children and the relationship between them. In addition, part of the interviewees felt their awareness of their role increased in teaching the social and emotional skills. This can be seen as a significant benefit that can be achieved by implementing the Fun Friends program. Because adults' role is unconditionally important when a child is practising the social and emotional skills with their still very underdeveloped brain.