Look, Fireworks!

Spark curiosity and stimulate engagement.

Learning Seeds Engagement Strategies

Comic Strip by Cynthia Yuan Cheng

Challenging Moment: A child’s solitary activity causes them to miss opportunities for peer engagement.

A Strategy to Try: Look, Fireworks!

Select visual ‘surprises’ to draw the child’s interest to peer activity. You might notice that a peer made a really big tower, or you might arrange to have your child’s favorite color, animal, or letters appear in the group’s work nearby. Rather than ‘bribing’ your child to look, by promising in detail why it’s worth a glance, maintain the surprise and just say, “Ooooooh! Look!”, as you gesture with your hand in the child’s peripheral vision to catch and deliver their gaze over toward the targeted work.

What Happens: The child directs their attention toward peer activity and is drawn toward engagement with the group experience.