Spiritual Formation Parallels to Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum: A Contextual Analysis of ‘Frog Street Curriculum’

ABSTRACT

Social-emotional learning skills are desirable for healthy child development just as literacy and mathematical skills are desirable for academic development. Because three-year-old children are expected to participate in socially acceptable behaviour in society, many faith-based early learning centres use a curriculum that provides social-emotional learning skills. ‘Frog Street’ is an early learning curriculum that focuses on five learning domains: physical development, cognitive development, language development, approaches to learning, and social-emotional development. The portion of the curriculum devoted to social-emotional is based on ‘Conscious Discipline’ which is a programme that develops social and emotional intelligence. While neither ‘Conscious Discipline’ nor ‘Frog Street’ was designed to promote Christian spiritual formation in young children, the social-emotional component of Frog Street, built from Conscious Discipline, can allow teachers in faith-based early learning centres, who choose to do so, to incorporate elements of Christian spiritual formation alongside the impartation of social-emotional skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Conscious discipline
• frog street
• social-emotional
• faith-based early learning centre
• Bible

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Kathy Frady

Dr. Kathy Frady the Chair of the Department of General Education at SUM Bible College and Theological Seminary, El Dorado Hills, California. She holds undergraduate degrees in Elementary Education and Psychology as well as a Master’s degree in Elementary Education with a Specialization in Reading from Ouachita Baptist University. She added eighteen graduate hours to her Master’s degree in Early Childhood from the University of New Orleans in 2011. She earned her PhD in Christian Education from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 2015. She has served as the preschool and children’s minister at a variety of churches in the USA and is a Pathway’s certified early learning teacher trainer. She is fascinated by the minds of young children and advocates for adults to see young children as competent and capable human beings.