The Unobvious Benefits of Self-Care Skills
The obvious bonuses of mastering self-care skills are clear: the baby becomes more independent, and you no longer need to monitor his every step. However, many parents neglect self-care skills, focusing more on developing the child's thinking and creativity. However, teachers and psychologists unanimously argue that self-care makes an unobvious but tangible contribution to literally all areas of a child’s life.
Child cognitive development
Learning a sequence of actions has a beneficial effect on the development of memory and thinking, and is involved in improving the child’s attention. It should also be remembered that the more skills a child has already mastered, the better he will be able to navigate a new situation for him, so self-service skills also contribute to the child’s overall intelligence.
Development of coordination and fine motor skills
Have you ever wondered how well you need to control your body in order to put on a T-shirt, handle a button, or tie your shoelaces? Numerous small actions that the baby has to perform when dressing and other procedures become real exercises for the development of fine and gross motor skills.
Impact on communication with other people
In our society, self-care skills are understood as an indicator of a person’s adequacy; we even unconsciously evaluate people by their appearance and neatness. A child who, by the age of 6-7 years, has problems getting dressed or, even more so, needs help while going to the restroom, will likely become an object of ridicule from peers, and sometimes even from adults. The opposite is also true: a child who does not have difficulties with self-care feels more confident and adapts more easily to kindergarten and school.
Self-care skills are not just about keeping a child tidy; they are skills that affect almost all areas of a child’s development. In addition, visiting kindergarten and communicating with other people causes much less stress for a child if he is able to take care of himself.
Are there special exercises for developing self-care skills?
Of course, experienced parents have tried many ways to teach their child to dress and take care of himself. We offer five educational exercises for children that will help develop self-care skills:
- Exercises to practice individual operations. Let's assume that the baby has difficulty putting on shoes. What does the process consist of? Putting your foot into a shoe, mastering various fasteners. Each of these operations can become part of a separate game: inserting and removing your feet into different shoes at speed or in accordance with the named color, fastening fasteners on clothes and holding the shoe in your hands. Any idea for a game that you and your baby like will be beneficial.
- Observation of household members. Children learn a huge part of their skills by repeating the actions of adults; they literally copy our behavior on an instinctive level, so the tradition of brushing teeth with the whole family or getting together for dinner not only contributes to family cohesion, but also allows the child to observe how adults cope with a variety of tasks.
- Role-playing games. Role-playing games for preschoolers are a real lifesaver for parents. A teddy bear or favorite doll can greatly speed up the process of mastering the skills of dressing or brushing your teeth.
- Let your child help you. Some skills (for example, combing hair) are quite difficult to practice on yourself right away. Give your baby the opportunity to help you with your hair.
- Play against the clock and set timers. Clear time frames are another incredibly effective tool in parenting. A visual display of time (such as an hourglass) helps a child focus on a task and also develops a general sense of time.
Children learn self-care skills through observation and repetition, as well as through play. In order to choose a suitable activity, analyze what your baby does better and what worse. Break down the missing skills into operations and select activities that are related to the development of these operations. You can always look for ideas in parent communities or ask for advice from teachers and child psychologists.
What are self-care skills?
First, let's understand what is included in the concept of self-care skills. In general, this is the child’s ability to independently maintain hygiene and perform necessary self-care procedures. Self-care skills include the habit of regularly brushing your teeth and combing your hair, going to the toilet on your own, dressing and undressing, using cutlery accepted in society, and so on. Sometimes self-care skills also include basic communication skills with others.
Organization of independent activities of older preschoolers
By the age of 5–6 years, important changes occur in the behavior and quality of children’s mental and physical actions. This is due to the formation of the basic processes of the nervous system, the development of various types of memory and thinking abilities. When preparing conditions for independent activity and thinking through methods for organizing children's activities, the teacher of the senior group takes into account the age characteristics of the students:
- In children 5–6 years old, attention is more stable than in younger preschoolers. At this age, the basic processes of the nervous system improve, self-regulation of behavior occurs, and children are less likely to become overtired. Children are able to observe any object or process for a long time, create large-scale buildings from a construction set, and assemble a mosaic from a significant number of parts.
- Children are capable of intentional memorization. Listening to the teacher’s explanations and instructions, students record the stages and methods of action in their memory and reproduce them later in independent studies: for example, they conduct experiments in the research corner or create crafts in the creativity center.
- The intellectual capabilities of children are improved. At the age of 5–6 years, a child quickly makes assumptions and predicts the results of actions. He independently establishes cause-and-effect relationships and navigates the temporal and spatial relationships of objects. Conscious experimentation, independently planned and executed, becomes possible. If a child wants to experiment with substances, he must first tell the teacher the safety rules. The teacher observes from the sidelines the children’s independent experimentation in the mini-laboratory.
- Cognitive interests expand, children study distant objects: planets, spaceships, the depths of the sea, dinosaurs, and children create drawings based on new information. Gaming activities become more complex: role-playing games are built according to rules discussed in advance, and roles are distributed among the participants.
- Fine motor skills are developed, children work and play with small objects: they assemble construction sets from small parts, make jewelry from beads and seed beads.
- Children willingly cooperate within the group. They like to independently choose partners for experiments, games and conversations, and discuss topics that interest them.
Older preschoolers are able to cooperate with each other during research and play activities
The development of independence is one of the conditions of the educational process in preschool educational institutions, aimed at raising a comprehensively developed personality. The Federal State Educational Standard (FSES) does not call children’s independent activities as a separate area of learning and pays more attention to the joint work of the teacher and students. However, the target for each developmental area (cognitive, physical, social-communicative, speech, artistic and aesthetic) is to encourage initiative in children's activities (mental or practical), stimulate independence in choosing methods of activity and their implementation. Forming a research type of thinking and creating positive motivation for creative solutions to problem situations creates a solid basis for successful learning at school. The goal of organizing independent activities in kindergarten is to develop the child as an independent creator and researcher.
Developing the skill of independently searching for information is one of the target foundations of education in preschool educational institutions
Tasks of organizing independent activities in the senior group
- Formation of strong-willed qualities: psychological resistance to the influence of external factors (street noise, voices of other children) and other people’s opinions, the desire to bring the plan to the final result. Older preschoolers begin to develop the ability for self-analysis and evaluation of completed actions.
- Improving self-regulation processes: the ability to calculate energy expenditure to perform planned actions, feel the need to change the type of activity or rest. At the age of 5–6 years, the processes of the nervous system actively develop: the child has perseverance, reacts positively to advice and constructive comments.
- Development of the ability to independently construct a game plan, observation, research, employment, the desire to implement ideas without the help of adults.
- Strengthening self-care skills. The actions of dressing and undressing, observing the rules of personal hygiene and cleanliness of the room should be brought to automaticity.
- Development of independence through carrying out work assignments: duty in the dining room, play area, bedroom, etc.
When planning classes for the development of independent activity, the age and individual characteristics of children, their interests and passions, consistency with thematic planning for educational activities and creative activities, and the material base for play and children's experimentation are taken into account. The subject-spatial environment in the group room should be developmental. Children receive positive emotions from independent activity and acquire new knowledge about the properties of objects and the connections between them. This environment is organized by the teacher, and children are free to choose ways of acting in its conditions. The principles of functioning of children's activity centers: accessibility, safety, enrichment with temporary materials (for example, in the center of cognitive activity you can organize an exhibition for Cosmonautics Day, in a corner of nature in the spring you can display boxes with bulbs of hyacinths or tulips, supplement the play area with a set of road signs while studying traffic rules on ECD classes and walks).
Drawing up a duty schedule - a technique for developing self-service skills through work assignments
Forms of organization of the subject-spatial environment
- Center for educational and research activity: science center, knowledge corner, experimental workshop, laboratory, experimentarium. Equipped with a selection of encyclopedias and albums with educational illustrations, diagrams, cards, models and figures of objects to study, materials (including natural ones) and tools for conducting experiments. Before independently conducting any experiment in the laboratory, students must seek permission from the teacher and first discuss the safety rules. For public holidays and events in the kindergarten, temporary exhibitions are organized in the research corner: “Taking care of the planet”, “Secrets of the Solar system”, “Structure of a volcano”, “How primitive people lived”.
At the center of cognitive and research activities, students participate in the search for new knowledge
- Game center: areas with sets of toys and costumes for role-playing games (“Traffic officer and drivers”, “Hospital”, “Grocery store”, “Kitchen”), a center for educational games (shelves with board and educational games, puzzles). To consolidate and improve self-service skills, play corners are supplemented with materials on relevant topics: clothes for toys with various types of fasteners, items for acting out problem situations (“Who made a mess in the kitchen”, “Doll Katya, put things in order in the closet”, “The bear is going to the kindergarten").
In a playful way, children reproduce what they have learned during classes
- Sports section. The physical activity center can be equipped with special equipment: hoops, balls of different sizes, jump ropes, elastic bands for jumping, sets for playing small towns, skittles.
The physical activity center provides children with equipment for outdoor games and exercises
- Center for environmental activities: a corner of nature, a living corner, a winter garden, a mini-vegetable garden (boxes with soil on the windowsill for growing herbs and vegetables). Pupils of the senior group independently conduct long-term observations of plant growth, engage in labor activities with knowledge of the characteristics of representatives of the plant world: water, moisten leaves, loosen the soil, monitor the light and temperature conditions in a corner of nature.
Senior preschoolers independently care for plants in a group
- Center for art/artistic and aesthetic activities: a corner of art or folk crafts (reproductions of paintings, small copies of architectural and sculptural objects, toys, dishes and interior items in folk style), a theater corner (scenery for staging fairy tales, puppet and finger theater, masks and character costumes for children, face painting), a productive creativity zone (materials for modeling, drawing, paper construction, including origami), a musical island (a collection of audio recordings - children's and holiday songs, sounds and voices of nature with instrumental accompaniment, musical instruments - xylophone, tambourine, children's synthesizer, castanets, balalaika, etc.).
Dramatizing episodes of favorite stories and improvising in acting out various plots is one of the forms of independent activity of preschoolers
- Psychological comfort center: relaxation corner, quiet zone, magic room (tent, marquee, hammock, sofas where children can relax and chat quietly). Children independently choose ways to relax: looking at a book, quietly playing with a doll, calm conversation with each other.
In the group it is necessary to organize a place where the child can be a little quiet and relax
Types of independent activities of older preschoolers: table
| Type of independent activity | Forms of implementation |
| Research | In the modern world, it is important to teach a child not only to assimilate and accumulate ready-made information, but also to develop the ability and desire for independent knowledge. Through visual observation, tactile contact and sound perception, children can learn new things about objects. A small, but independently made discovery causes delight in a child and a desire to gain new knowledge. Older preschoolers conduct research consciously. They make observations in a corner of nature, a science center, during a walk and conduct experiments in a mini-laboratory. The teacher is always ready to answer the children’s questions. |
| Gaming | Children independently act out scenes from fairy tales, cartoons, or everyday situations using toys. By older preschool age, there is a difference in the themes of games between boys and girls: boys play with cars, soldiers, robots, build fortresses and ships from construction sets, girls prefer to play with dolls, dishes, and plush toys. Children’s play activities are often imitative of people’s professions and social events: “In the store”, “Mothers and daughters”, “Hairdresser” or “Beauty salon”, “Bank”, “In the doctor’s/dentist’s office”, “Traffic officer and pedestrians”, “Playing at kindergarten/school”. |
| Artistic speech | During the school year, children get acquainted with literary works and learn to answer questions about the content of the text and retell the plot. Independent artistic and speech activity is manifested during the staging of fairy tales in the theater corner, where there are scenery, costumes, and masks of familiar fairy tales. The teacher can encourage the children in the play area to take action by placing in the corner a set for a finger or puppet theater based on the fairy tale they have studied. The ability of artistic retelling is realized in students’ conversations with each other, when they want to share a particularly liked episode of a work of art. |
| Motor | For older preschoolers, physical activity is realized in role-playing outdoor games: “Polar bears on an ice floe”, “Mousetrap”, “Hares and Hunters”, “Don’t stay on the floor”, “Cossacks-robbers”, “The sea is worried - once!” etc. Girls learn to jump rope and rubber band in a variety of ways. Boys love to play football. |
| Artistic | Creating visual images using paints, paper, plasticine, and natural materials. Children's creative works reflect their ideas about objects. Mastering the techniques of drawing with pencil and paints, sculpting and appliqué, the child begins to feel the desire not just to show, but to do beautifully. Preschoolers love to draw in their free time! The older group children have a plot in their drawings. Their drawings are a vision of objects and situations and an attitude towards them at the same time. What caused bright, positive emotions, the child tries to convey colorfully and positively. The corners of developmental activities must certainly contain a variety of materials for children's crafts, decorations for finished works: threads, beads, sequins, stickers, natural and waste materials, buttons, pebbles, shells, ribbons, postcards, glitter. |
| Labor education | The best incentive for preschoolers to work independently is an example before their eyes. The children willingly help the teacher in cleaning the territory of the kindergarten or group room, take care of the plantings on the site, and clear the paths and benches of snow in winter. The introduction of a duty schedule improves the ability to take a responsible approach to instructions from seniors and try to complete the work efficiently. Visual material in the form of printed algorithms on the wall motivates children 5–6 years old to independently cope with the task (arrange cutlery and dishes) and then compare their actions with the given scheme, evaluate the result - whether everything was done correctly. Older preschoolers love to help the younger ones: take them from the gym to the group, fasten their clothes, dry themselves, etc. |
| Environmental education | Caring for nature is a valuable personality trait in the modern world. Children enjoy caring for plants in the nature center and on the site, feeding animals and birds. |
| Self-service | Self-care involves the child mastering hygiene standards and how to comply with them (washing, washing hands after a walk and before eating, brushing teeth, taking a shower), mastering the skill of dressing and undressing, the culture of eating and rules of behavior at the dinner table. Self-care is considered the main type of work activity for preschoolers; it allows children to feel independent from an adult. In older preschool age, the skill of monitoring one’s appearance and the order of the surrounding environment, and following the rules of hygiene are consolidated. |
Game activity remains one of the leading types of activity in older preschool age
Motivating start to class
Children's independent activity manifests itself in various routine moments during the day: upon arrival at the garden in the morning, on a walk, during leisure time in the afternoon. In order for children to be able to use their imagination and a set of skills to occupy themselves in their free time in employment centers, the teacher must achieve the effectiveness of children's activity during educational classes. Interacting with students, the teacher, by directly showing verbal instructions, forms and develops in the students the ability to highlight the main thing - a question or problem. Those activities will be the most interesting and productive, which were aimed at achieving a specific result (making crafts, experimenting, compiling a completed story from pictures, completing a work assignment, playing a sports game). Having mastered the algorithm of actions and methods of implementation, children transfer the forms of activity worked out with the teacher into individual activity.
It is important not to occupy the time allocated for children's games with other activities. Play for older preschoolers still remains a way to consolidate practical skills, relieve mental stress, and interact with peers.
A game for preschoolers is not only entertainment, but also a form of communication
The structure of independent activity of preschoolers consists of three stages:
- motive,
- action,
- result.
The role of the teacher is to create motivation for further actions of students in the conditions of the subject-spatial environment organized by the teacher. The desire to work independently can be of different natures: playful, cognitive, volitional, social and emotional. Creating a friendly and trusting atmosphere is an indispensable condition for the children’s successful activities. The teacher makes sure that each child is in a good mood before and during the lesson. The social orientation of motives for work is expressed in a positive attitude towards collective activity, the desire to discuss what is being studied or created, and the ability to listen to the opinions and desires of classmates. Volitional motivation means the direction of a child’s actions towards achieving a specific goal, interest in demonstrating his abilities. Playful and educational motives often arise spontaneously, but the teacher can initiate these types of motivation by predicting the independent activities of students within the framework of thematic planning.
Using a motivational start to the lesson, the teacher predicts children’s independent activity in games
| Motivating start to class | Predicted independent activity of pupils |
| Studying visual material. The teacher examines with the children a model of the earth in prehistoric times: dinosaurs reign on earth, in water and in the sky. The guys name the differences between ancient lizards and determine the structural features (plates, spines, partial plumage, powerful claws). | Search for information, expanding ideas about dinosaurs in the cognitive center: consideration of an illustrated encyclopedia. Game with dinosaur figures. |
| Conducting a conversation. — Guys, what do we do before we sit down at the dinner table? - Wash your hands. - Why are we doing this? — To wash away dirt, to protect yourself from germs from unwashed hands entering the body while eating. — When else during the day should you wash your hands and face? — In the morning after waking up, upon returning from the street, after working with dirty materials or playing with pets, before going to bed. | Playing with dolls and a washbasin, stylized as Moidodyr from the poem by K. I. Chukovsky. |
| Conducting an experiment. The teacher demonstrates the ability of salt to dissolve in water. | Research activities in an experimental laboratory to expand understanding of the ability of substances to dissolve in water (sugar, food coloring, sand, clay). |
| Surprise moment. The group receives a package from a fairy-tale character, in which the students find a kit for creating a puppet theater. | Dramatization in a playful form of fairy tales known to the pupil (“Teremok”, “Kolobok”, “The Hare and the Fox”, “The Fox and the Wolf”). |
| Reading poems, riddles. The teacher asks the children riddles about toys and for each correct answer reads the corresponding poem by A. Barto from the “Toys” series. | Activity in the play area with artistic and speech activities. |
| Attraction to the game. The teacher shows the children a rubber band and asks what methods of jumping over it and game options they know (“Olympics, mom’s lipstick,” “Confusion,” etc.). Instead of a rubber band, you can offer jump ropes for the game. | Outdoor games with a rubber band. |
If you invite children to show how they can play with a familiar object, they are drawn into the game
Examples of independent activities in the senior group of kindergarten
We invite you to familiarize yourself with the options for independent activity of older preschoolers in various regime moments.
