Early Years Edit | December 2024

Welcome to the December 2024 edition of the Early Years Edit. In this Edit we cover:

• Triple P’s starting school strategies 
• Royal Lifesaving WA – Drowning prevention
• Keep kids sun safe outdoors with SunSmart 
• Active8 – Supporting families to eat well and play more 
• Linking infant sleep patterns to teenage sleep health 
• Australian Education Research Organisation’s early childhood learning trajectories

Triple P’s starting school strategies

Children may have mixed emotions about starting school for the first time, ranging from excitement to dread – this is normal. They could be worried about being away from their family, coping with schoolwork or making friends. The Triple P – Positive Parenting Program shares some tips to help kids be school ready for 2025.

Parents and carers can help their children positively transition into starting school and face any potential challenges by focusing on boosting their self-esteem, confidence and coping skills. Families are encouraged to talk to their children about any fears they have and to figure out solutions together.

Triple P’s top tips for being school ready:

• Prepare the practical things: can they open their lunch box? Does their uniform fit? Is their bag packed?
• Play a game of ‘school’ to model what happens there.
• Attend any preparation days to help children know what to expect. 
• Chat with other parents and try to arrange play dates to build friendships. 

For more support, parents and carers can get a toolkit of proven strategies to help build their skills and knowledge and raise capable, confident kids with Triple P Online.

Royal Lifesaving WA - Drowning prevention 

Water should be a safe and enjoyable environment for young children, but sadly drowning remains one of the leading causes of preventable death in children aged 0-4 years in Australia. Royal Life Saving WA has released new downloadable water safety resources that can be easily shared with parents, featuring key tips for keeping children safe around water.

Royal Life Saving recommends four key actions to keep young children safe around water:

• Supervise ­– always keep watch of your child around water
• Restrict – restrict your child's access to water at all times
• Teach – teach your child water safety skills
• Respond – learn CPR and call 000 in an emergency.

If you work with children and families, we encourage you to download and share the water safety information through your organisation’s newsletter or social media to remind parents and carers of the importance of keeping watch around water this summer. Hard copy resources are also available and can be requested on the Royal Lifesaving WA website.

Keep Watch provides further education, advice and many more resources for families, community groups and others connecting with children, such as professional development, listening to parent stories and learning about drowning myths.

Keep kids sun safe outdoors with SunSmart

Outdoor time is great for babies and young children. To make it a positive experience, protecting their delicate skin from harmful UV radiation by covering up is important. Over-exposure to UV radiation can cause sunburn and UV damage accumulated during childhood and adolescence is associated with an increased risk of skin cancer later in life. UV can’t be seen or felt and UV levels can be high even on cooler days, so it’s important to protect the skin when the UV Index is 3 or above.

Here are some ways to keep kids SunSmart:

1. Use outdoor spaces with ample shade, such as verandahs, trees and gazebos.
2. Encourage children to wear sun protective clothing and broad brimmed hats. Consider having spares on hand from op shops.
3. Download Cancer Council’s free SunSmart Global UV app which shows daily sun protection times and local UV levels.
4. Ensure your next family picnic, children’s expo, nature play, playgroup, teddy bear picnic or other outdoor event is SunSmart.

Cancer Council WA has free resources and information available from Generation SunSmart including free print versions or to share digitally with your community.

Active8

Supporting families to eat well and play more

The Department of Health is offering free places in the Active8 Program to families with children aged 2–5 years across Western Australia. Active8 is a free, eight-week healthy lifestyle program designed to support parents and carers in fostering healthier habits for their toddlers and preschoolers. The program provides evidence-based guidance on managing fussy eating, encouraging active play and reducing sedentary behaviours.

To accommodate busy schedules, Active8 is available in two flexible formats:

Active8 In Person – parents engage with others in their community for a 90-minute session each week incorporating active play, snack time for the children, creative play and a facilitated workshop for parents and carers about implementing positive changes for their families. Receive free resources to support you in maintaining healthy changes at home. 

Active8 Online – for working parents or those seeking flexibly, the online program connects parents with their own health coach over the phone weekly, at times that suit them. The evidence-based program is being delivered by nutritionists/dieticians. Families receive free resources to support parents in maintaining healthy changes at home.  

Group programs run for eight weeks and locations vary each term. See the latest offerings at https://theactive8.org/program-location-list/.

Online places are available all year round on demand. Families can start as soon as they are ready.

For more information or to sign up, visit https://theactive8.org/wa or call 1300 822 953.

Linking infant sleep patterns

to teenage sleep health

It is widely accepted that sleep is an important part of early childhood development and key to good health throughout life. However, there is still much to discover around the factors that help children get the best sleep possible, and the long-term implications of our childhood sleep routines. Published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, a longitudinal study of sleep data has explored the development of individuals’ sleep trajectories, composed of: Sleep Duration, Bedtime, and Mid-Point of Night-Time Sleep (MPS).

Data collected at multiple timepoints from infancy through to adolescence allowed researchers to identify and characterise different types of sleep trajectories. Importantly, this allowed them to explore the association between poor sleep trajectories beginning in infancy (persistent shorter sleep, persistent later bedtime, persistent later MPS) and maintained into adolescence, along with potential risk factors present during the perinatal phase.

They found that family adversity was linked to persistently poor sleep across all domains, while higher maternal socioeconomic status lowered this risk. This highlights the complexity and breadth of factors influencing children’s sleep and supports a growing call for greater awareness around sleep health inequity experienced most by children and families of lower socioeconomic status and interrelated sociodemographic factors.

Information on sleep inequities and establishing beneficial sleep health can be found at:

• Emerging Minds’ practice papers on Sleep health and sleep inequities and Child sleep problems and Podcast on the relationship between parenting style and infant sleep – Insights on infant sleep with Dr Pamela Douglas
• Sleep problems in babies and toddlers and Bedtime problems in children fact sheets from the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
• Raising Children’s library of online resources
• Kids Health Matters podcast episode on Sleep produced by the WA Government’s Child and Adolescent Health Service (CAHS)
• CAHS’ Let’s Sleep and Ngala’s Sleep Support programs.

Australian Education Research Organisation’s early childhood learning trajectories

The Australian Education Research Organisation’s (AERO) evidence based early childhood learning trajectories explain the different domains of learning and how children progressively develop their skills in these areas. While designed for teachers and early childhood educators, they are publicly available for parents/carers, family service providers and community groups to guide and reflect on their activities and interactions with young children.  

The key domains are: 

• Executive functions
• Social and emotional learning
• Mathematical thinking
• Language and communication
• Physical development. 

Each domain’s learning trajectory identifies skills that might be observed as the child develops in this area, with some domains and skill development pathways closely interrelated. For example, a child developing their working memory in the ‘executive functions’ domain will ‘show interest and focused attention towards people or objects for short periods of time’ before moving on to follow simple instructions with support and then to independently recalling complex sequences of words, pictures or actions. The trajectories are not intended as a checklist, acknowledging that all children learn differently and learning is not always linear. 
 
Rather, the trajectories provide an opportunity for informed planning, shared language and positive reflection on children’s development, in groups or individually. For example, reflections on the ‘executive functions’ domain may support planning for activities that include following one-step instructions and noticing how children respond to inform the next activity. A user guide is available and AERO recently released short, animated videos that support understanding of each domain. See the AERO website to access all resources. 

Early Years Edit archive

Did you know that previous versions of the Early Years Edit can be found on our website?

Visit Early Years Edit (www.wa.gov.au) to find previous versions of the newsletter and Connecting Early Years Networks (www.wa.gov.au) for general information about the Early Years Networks.

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