ABSTRACT
This chapter provides playful activities within care pedagogies, supports the relationship between the practitioner and the infant. Understanding schemas and emotion makes explicit the connections between young children’s spontaneous repeated actions and representations of their emotional worlds. Bruner described the infant as an early hypothesis maker and evaluated that observed random and hard to read behaviour was in many cases predominately due to the infant tiring or losing concentration. Singing is conveyed by many parents to their infants in societies around the world. Friedrich Froebel’s theory of education was unique in that he advocated mutual respect and holistic learning. Actively engaging in a close relationship and using the same finger rhymes stimulates connections between brain neurons therefore developing the capacity to increase brain development. Relational pedagogy works at the level of one to one interactions, requiring sensitive responsive caregiving that relies on attunement and intersubjectivity.
