Why is the practice important?

Caring communities help both educators and children by providing them with equitable, supportive, and welcoming learning environments.

Caring creates a ripple effect. The children begin to feel safe and secure knowing adults have their best interests at heart, and the ripple continues. This sense of security allows the children to look beyond their own immediate needs to the needs of others. Children who are taught and encouraged to show caring behaviors early on are more likely to continue these behaviors in later years. Prosocial behaviors also predict children’s strengths in other developmental areas, such as academic and social and emotional skills.

Sustaining Children’s Cultural, Ethnic, and Language Identities

Educators view all children as valued members of the learning community. They know that learning caring behaviors may be influenced by various caregiving practices and values like, for example, a family environment that emphasizes interdependence rather than independence.

Here are some ways educators can sustain children’s cultural, ethnic, and language identities:

• Work closely with families and community members to learn about children’s cultural and language experiences and create meaningful learning activities that affirm children’s familial and cultural backgrounds.
• Design environments that reflect and celebrate children’s diverse cultures and languages.
• Teach children pride in their cultural, linguistic, and individual identities.
• Show children ways to help a peer feel fully included in their learning community.
• Plan activities where children share and learn about each other’s cultural and language backgrounds and experiences.

Practices for Children with Disabilities or Suspected Delays

In a caring and equitable community, educators model appreciation for children’s diverse abilities. They display pictures and use books that portray people with disabilities in positive ways. They support the success of all children and offer individualized support when children experience difficulties in social situations.

Educators provide varying levels and types of support, depending on a child’s learning needs. Here are some effective practices and examples:

• Modify the physical environment to ensure access and participation of every child.
  • Arrange the physical environment so that a child using a wheelchair or walker can independently move around.
  • Post a visual of classroom rules to help a child with a language delay better understand expected social behavior.
• Increase learning opportunities.
  • To provide more support for a child who struggles to participate in social interactions with peers, educators can invite a more socially competent peer to model a social behavior or directly invite the child to join in an activity.
  • Educators can use an activity matrix to plan when and how to do this teaching practice during daily activities and routines.
  • Provide intensive instruction to teach a child who struggles with social interactions important skills, like asking a peer to play, offering to help a peer who is struggling with a task, or consoling a peer in distress.

Learning Stages for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

Infants — Early On

Children at an early stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Show interest in other children by smiling, touching, reaching, or making sounds directed to the child.
• Engage in simple back-and-forth interactions with another child by vocalizing, imitating each other’s sounds, using gestures, or sharing or exchanging a toy or object.
• Vocalize, gesture, or cry to seek adult help, or offer a toy or object to comfort another child who is crying or upset.
• Interact with children who have diverse physical, language, and ability characteristics.

Toddlers — Emerging Skills

Children at an emerging stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Actively move near other children to play or engage in simple conversations.
• Show a preference for a playmate, such as greeting friends by name or seeking a friend to play with and moving toward them.
• Use words or actions to comfort another child who is hurt or crying.
• Engage in conversations about biases and injustices. Adults can support when they see instances of unfair behavior, such as when a child grabs another child’s toy, or when a group of children reject a peer who does not yet speak English.

Preschoolers — Increasing Mastery

Children who are increasing their proficiency in caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Use a variety of skills to enter social situations with other children, such as suggesting something to do together, joining an existing activity, or sharing a toy.
• Play cooperatively with other children by communicating with each other and working toward a common goal.
• Recognize biases and injustices and speak up or offer support when another child is being treated unfairly.
• Describe their own cultural, language, and ability identities and how they are similar and different from those of other children.

The Creating a Caring Community tip sheet explains how creating caring communities involves warm, respectful relationships among children and adults.

See It in Action

This playlist features examples of practices that facilitate creating a caring community in early childhood learning environments. As you watch these short videos, think about what you already do to foster a caring community and what additional practices you can implement.

Tools for Learning Leaders

While watching the exemplar videos, use this tool to document observations around how education staff create caring communities. It supports conversations about increasing the use of specific practices, create coaching goals, and more.

Do

Caring behavior is like a drop of water that ripples out as education staff establish positive relationships with every child in their care. The children begin to feel safe and secure knowing adults have their best interests at heart, and the ripple continues.

Below, you’ll find examples of caregiving and learning activities and practices that can create a sense of community and belonging for all children and families in your program. Add to or change these activities and practices in ways that honor and celebrate the cultural, language, and individual identities of children and their families.

• Tips for Educators
• Learning with Families
• Tips for Families

Reflect and Improve

Learning activities help education staff expand their knowledge of a given practice. These activities support planning, implementing, and reflecting on the practice in the early learning environment.

Use these questions to reflect on community and community of learners, such as classrooms and socialization groups. These reflections can happen on your own or in a small group of peers at your program.