Positive Psychology in Early Childhood Education Analysis Essay

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Positive Psychology in Early Childhood Education
Positive psychology deals with the concept of happiness and how individuals can lead a fulfilled and highly satisfying life. The focus of this field in psychology are positive aspects, influences, and experiences in life that bring about different emotions and values such as joy, inspiration, love, resilience, and compassion (Pennock, n.d.). The happiness and mindset of individuals are highly influential in the academic performance and overall wellbeing of children. In this toolkit, different activities that will be beneficial in developing different aspects of positive psychology, specifically for children in the early childhood years are presented.
Week

Theme

Research & Resources

Positive Psychology Learning

Classroom Application for Children

1

Strengths

Bell, J. G., Cummings, K., Simhai, M., & Solodkin, A. (2019). Positive Psychology Interventions in the Classroom for Students with Special Needs: First Book. MASTER OF APPLIED POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (MAPP) SERVICE-LEARNING PROJECTS.
Pennock, S. F. (n.d.). 3 Positive Psychology Exercises. 3 Meaning & Valued Living Exercises Pack (PDF). https://tools.positivepsychology.com/ebook.

Strengths can be referred to as a child’s pre-existing capacity to perform or showcase a behavior, feeling, or thinking. The identification and awareness of a young child about his/her own strengths will be beneficial in knowing when and where to use them, in order to function in an optimal manner. The awareness will also help in knowing how to improve these strengths more in the future. Aside from awareness of self, recognizing the strengths of others is also a good practice that will apply the concepts of positive psychology when dealing with people.
The objective of these activities is to promote a healthy perspective of self and others, including identifying strong and admirable traits in a person, at an early age.

* Strength-based identity
The children will be asked to write down in a journal, at least 3 things that they see as their strength. These strengths are encouraged to be holistic and diverse that will celebrate both the uniqueness and strength of the children. These strengths can be based depending on the perspective of the writer.
After their journal writing, the children will have to discuss what they wrote within a group. In addition to enumerating their strengths, further elaboration is encouraged about where can these strengths be applicable, and how can these strengths be further improved.
* Appreciation Task
The children will be grouped into at least 3 to 5 students and they will be seated forming a circle. Each kid will be saying 2 strengths of his/her classmates, and the adjective or descriptor used cannot be used on the same individual again by other people in the group.
This will encourage the children to be creative in describing their classmates and will also avoid redundancy so that they will be able to give a more meaningful and less generalized adjective for their peers.

2

Gratitude

Emmons, R. A., & M...