Spiritual Formation Parallels to Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum: A Contextual Analysis of ‘Frog Street Curriculum’

ABSTRACT Social-emotional learning skills are desirable for healthy child development just as literacy and mathematical skills are desirable for academic development. Because three-year-old children are expected to participate in socially acceptable behaviour in society, many faith-based early learning centres use a curriculum that provides social-emotional learning skills. ‘Frog Street’ is an early learning curriculum that focuses on five learning domains: physical development, cognitive development, language development, approaches to learning, and social-emotional development. The portion of the curriculum devoted to social-emotional is based on ‘Conscious Discipline’ which is a programme that develops social and emotional intelligence. While neither ‘Conscious Discipline’ nor ‘Frog Street’ was designed to promote Christian spiritual formation in young children, the social-emotional component of Frog Street, built from Conscious Discipline, can allow teachers in faith-based early learning centres, who choose to do so, to incorporate elements of Christian spiritual formation alongside the impartation of social-emotional skills.