Joyful Experiences

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Joyful experiences defined:
Early care and education programs should be joyful places. Early care settings are well suited to providing joyful experiences. This is because early childhood settings are highly social places and are centred on providing children with opportunities for learning. Being amongst friends and family is joyful. And so too is learning.

The concept of the right to joyful experiences in the context of early education provides a test for the kinds of experiences and activities that should be included in early education settings. Experiences that are stressful and that invoke fear in children should be excluded from early care and education settings. Learning activities and other program elements should be joyful first, and only then should other goals be met. Additionally, there should be many experiences in early learning settings that are crafted solely for the sake of joy.

Programs should be evaluated by the level of joy experienced by the children and adults in the program. There should be laughter, smiles, giggles and many other signs of joy. Additionally, joy should be deep, going beyond fun to deeply felt joy. Adults should treat children as human, and it should be recognized that deeply human experiences, which we consider to be a precondition to joy, are not always fun. In addition to fun, joy comes from having meaningful relationships. Meaningful relationships always involve dialogue, which often includes conflict. With deep joy comes the possibility of disappointment and of loss. It is the role of the early childhood educator to mediate such experiences and provide unconditional love for all the children in our care.

Joyful experiences and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure.(article 24)
• Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. (article 25)
• Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality.(article 26)

Call to action:
Early care and education providers advance joyful experiences by providing children with loving places. Learning activities and other program elements are designed to be joyful. Early childhood educators provide children with opportunities for playful social experiences, for learning activities and with emotional support. Activities are done in a variety of ways and settings and are based on children's own interests and ways of being. Children are treated like they matter, their views are listened and responded to.

Joyful experiences go beyond fun when easrly educators form strong bonds with children and families. Times and places for these bonds are provided. These times and places include structured social activities, formal and informal talks, time for talking and sharing of ideas and emotions and plenty of fun activities and experiences done together.

Finally, early care and education providers can advance the right to joyful experiences by being direct about why joy is a core component of quality early care and education. We should tell the public that in early care and education joy is to be sought on its own merit, not as something to provide merely to get to some other end.