Promoting Self Care and Daily Living skills

• Activities of daily living

  Everyday tasks that young children engage in so they can actively participate in life activities, such as handwashing, bathing, dressing, brushing teeth, feeding, and drinking
• Self-care skills


  • Develop gross and fine motor skills, executive functions, and even language skills in young children
  • Learning such skills is a precursor to developing independence in young children as they slowly learn to do things on their own, with adult assistance gradually being withdrawn in the process
• Developing children learn self-care skills within a given time period and at a faster pace as compared with children who are at risk for developmental delays
• All children can learn self-care skills when teachers and adults use developmentally appropriate practices, including modeling and scaffolding of learning experiences
• Scaffolding


  Adult demonstrates how a self-care skill, and subsequently provides guidance as the child performs a task
• For children with challenges, the process of scaffolding may take longer than typically developing as more support may be necessary as well as more opportunities needed to practice the skill before achieving mastery
• Task Analysis


  Breaking a skill down into smaller, more manageable components
• Forward Chaining


  Adult teaches children the task step by step, by starting with the first step down to the last step
• Backward Chaining


  Adult teaches children the task step by step, by starting with the last step down to the first step
• Steps in handwashing


  • Turn on the faucet
  • Put hands under the faucet
  • Pump soap
  • Rub hands
  • Rinse hands
  • Turn off the faucet
  • Get paper towel
  • Dry hands
• The best way to teach self-care skills is through embedded learning opportunities, where specific skills are integrated in naturally occurring incidents, such as routines and even during play
• Through observation and developmental checklists, adults can monitor the frequency and level of proficiency children can perform self-care skills
• Adults can also note how much assistance the child needs in doing the skill and note what is developmentally appropriate based on their chronological age for typically developing children and their mental age for children with developmental delays or additional needs
• Self-care skills checklist

  • Removes pants (does not include unfastening)
  • Puts on pants (does not include fastening)
  • Puts on a pullover shirt
  • Puts on a front opening shirt
  • Fastens buttons on shirt
  • Starts a zipper
  • Puts on socks
• Self-care skills are everyday tasks that young children engage in to actively participate in life activities
• Backward Chaining is an example of teaching self-care skills to children which includes breaking a skill down to smaller components
• It is important to allow children at a young age to practice self-care skills
• While doing the self-care activities it is important for adults to do all the steps and let the children watch you
• Forward Chaining

  The adult performs the first step with the child, and the adult does the rest of the steps
• Approaches to teach self-care skills


  • Children sing along to songs on handwashing, playing games, and creates their own story book about self-care skills
• Scaffolding


  Teacher Anne is teaching her learners on how to brush teeth, she then demonstrates to the class the proper way of brushing their teeth and provides guidance while the learners are brushing their teeth
• Backward Chaining


  The adult performs all the steps and leaves the last step to do with the children
• Task Analysis


  Teacher John is about to teach on how to dress up properly, he then chops down the steps and teaches the students the step-by-step procedures on how to dress up properly