Supporting Leadership Activities: Preschool Learners
In the preschool years, there are a variety of activities with which you can engage to help support a child develop leadership skills. Read on to learn more about how you can incorporate leadership-related activities with your learners.
Thinking About Leadership (‘I’)
Self-Portraits
You can help learners start seeing themselves as leaders through different art activities. For example, invite learners to draw a self-portrait on the whiteboard or a large piece of chart paper using crayons, markers, or pencil crayons. You might also extend this activity to include other mediums such as poster board or construction paper, magazines or newspapers, and other supplies. Be sure to remind them to use images, symbols, words or cutouts from magazines and newspapers to represent their favourite pastimes, foods, animals, traits that make them unique, and places they call home. When finished, learners can display their self-portraits as part of a gallery walk where the class walks around the room to enjoy the work of their peers. You can extend the invitation to other classrooms or caregivers.
Follow-The-Leader
Similarly, you can engage learners in play through follow-the-leader style activities where they take turns being the leader. Liven things up by incorporating music to move and dance to like these songs from The Kiboomers:
Growth Mindset
Children are never too young to begin learning about a growth mindset or the power of yet. Click through the slides below to learn more about different resources you can use to teach preschoolers about having a growth mindset.
Feeling Leadership (‘We’)
Circle Time
You can also support preschoolers learn to develop problem-solving skills, a critical leadership trait. Doing so might open opportunities for you to both model problem-solving skills, as well as explicitly teach through instruction. For example, during circle time, you might teach children the steps to solving a problem with a friend by:
- Identifying what the problem is.
- Thinking about and brainstorming solutions to the problem.
- Thinking about potential outcomes including how others will feel.
- Trying the solution.
Consider posting the problem-solving steps somewhere in the classroom where learners can refer during daily interactions (Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, n.d.). For preschoolers, visual cues are always helpful!
During circle time, you might also encourage learners to alternate leading. The facilitator can pick a song, instruct the group in a dance or movement activity, or tell a personal story. Remember that circle time is an opportunity for children to share their ideas, opinions, and feelings. It also provides intentional space and time for you to teach active listening, turn-taking, and respectful communication, all of which foster leadership skills (Aamir, 2023).
Picture Books
Read diverse stories about different leadership skills and then talk about the characters’ different emotions, feelings, and how they respond to and resolve different social situations. Check out the titles below for some of our favourite picture books about problem-solving.
Practicing Leadership (‘Us’)
Classroom Roles
Giving preschoolers a safe space with which to practice their emerging leadership skills is important. Children are eager to lean into leadership roles and your classroom can be a space for them to practice how to effectively and intentionally demonstrate leadership. Perhaps children can explore through play how to take on different leadership roles within their community, such as school leaders (e.g., principal, librarian, teacher), family leaders (e.g., parents, guardians, extended family), or community leaders (e.g., coaches, lifeguards, fire or police chief, activists).
Similarly, invite children to take on various roles within the classroom like zookeeper (i.e., someone who feeds the class pet), toy leader (i.e., someone who leads cleanup for the day), or line leader (i.e., child at the front of the line for recess). Consider teaching young children about playground safety rules and assign a group of children to be the playground safety patrol for a week. Their role is to remind their classmates about safety guidelines and help ensure everyone is playing safely.
Mindfulness
Children are never too young to start developing their mindfulness practice – a practice which will help them learn to self-regulate or self-manage, practice responsible decision-making, develop positive relationship skills, and gain greater self- and social-awareness (CASEL, n.d.). One way you can start nurturing mindfulness with preschoolers is to read the book Alphabreaths: The ABCs of Mindful Breathing.
Together, these activities promote responsibility, empathy, and leadership in ensuring the well-being of others, the classroom, and the community.
