How does your child respond to difficulties? Do they throw a tantrum, give up, or find ways to overcome challenges?
A child’s formative years are crucial for developing the behaviours, boundaries, and social skills that shape them for life. Beyond facts and knowledge, true education nurtures essential learning dispositions such as curiosity, perseverance, flexible thinking, and the ability to ask questions. These soft skills help children navigate challenges and build the foundations for future success in an increasingly complex world.
As you observe your little ones work their way through everyday situations, you may start noticing distinctive patterns of behaviour. A child’s formative years are exceptionally important as it is the period when they learn appropriate behaviours, boundaries and social skills that will remain with them for life. Especially when the world is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, these ways of coping with problems are budding indicators of how they would perform in future.
Parents would already know that education is more than just learning about facts and knowledge, but the process of learning, such as the intricacies of posing questions, perseverance, thinking flexibly, and thirst for knowledge that are even more crucial for success. Learning these soft skills can take several lengthy processes of trial and error, and one may not even eventually succeed in cultivating these proficiencies.
But what if we tell you that there is a structured way of knowing how to behave intelligently and respond effectively to uncertainty or dilemmas that will better prepare your child for the future?
What is Habits of Mind?
Habits of Mind™, developed by Dr Arthur Costa, is a framework that helps children develop intelligent thinking dispositions for autonomous learning, critical thinking, and effective problem-solving.
Rather than focusing only on knowledge, it nurtures positive ways of thinking such as persistence, curiosity, creativity, and flexible thinking. These habits help children ask meaningful questions, navigate challenges confidently, interact with others, and apply their learning to everyday life and an ever-changing world.
While the Habits of Mind™ framework has long been adopted by Singapore’s Ministry of Education to groom the top 1% of students under its Gifted Education Programme, Li'lberry is the first and only preschool network globally certified by the Institute for Habits of Mind™.
How We Incorporate Habits of Mind™ in Our Curriculum
Teaching & Reinforcement
Each month, teachers introduce a new Habit of Mind™ through engaging, age-appropriate activities and memorable slogans. The habit is consistently reinforced during lessons, playtime, mealtimes, and everyday teachable moments.
Parental Involvement
We keep parents updated on their child’s progress and offer parenting workshops with practical strategies to reinforce these habits at home.
Environment
Our classrooms feature Habits of Mind™ displays and teachers model positive behaviours daily. Monthly HoM Little Ambassadors are also recognised for demonstrating these dispositions at school and at home.
We have specially curated 12 of the 16 Habits of Mind™ to nurture through our curriculum, daily routines, and everyday teachable moments.
