Supporting Parents Whilst Having Musical Fun

We have had an exciting start to our year at Funtrain as over the Christmas break, I was lucky enough to meet with Coral Romain B’Ed Hons, BSc, Hons, NPQH, MSc, a Behaviour Expert, to discuss offering additional support for parents wanting to explore and understand further the positive behaviour management techniques all our class leaders follow.

Funtrain’s Unique Ethos

Everyone, over the many years, who has joined in with our Funtrain sessions will be aware that we pride ourselves on providing welcoming, understanding, relaxed classes, so enabling your child to flourish within this supportive environment.  We reward positive behaviour and ignore the negative – something all our class leaders at Funtrain understand as they follow these behaviour techniques.  As you know, everyone has good and not such good days.  Funtrain gives your child the opportunity to grow with confidence and it helps our parents deal with what can sometimes be challenging behaviour

Introducing our Children’s Behaviour Specialist

Coral has been working in education for the last 34 years – with children from pre-school age to 25, particularly in the area of children and young people with additional needs. She has for the last 20 years worked as a Principal and Head-teacher and is also trained as a Behaviour Specialist. Her perspective is that we are all special and all have needs that are particular – every child is an individual and we all learn differently.  She is passionate about this and feel that some schools struggle to meet these needs or often do not have the skills or resources they really need.  Positive Behaviour Support is now being taught to teachers and carers across the country and is proving highly successful in supporting children in mainstream schools and in a range of settings.

This is was some of the feedback we received from Coral after visiting us at Funtrain:

“Today I worked alongside Peggy and observed two of her sessions.  Peggy’s knowledge, understanding and enthusiasm supported every child throughout the sessions.  All of the children, regardless of age or skills, were actively engaged in learning – even a little one of only 1! The children showed that they were able to share, to communicate effectively, to listen to instructions and respond – taking turns whenever this was required.  The children were so brave at such a young age and were able to take part and interact as part of a whole group – to overcome natural anxieties and shyness and indeed to predict the next part of the session as well as being role models for each other!

Peggy is so experienced and so well prepared – all her sessions are rigorously planned, organised and resources so that she is able to allow each child to learn as they feel able, to take part when they feel ready, and to feel safe in their experiences. She works using strategies that are clearly aligned with preparing children to learn and using techniques also linked with and based upon the values embraced by Positive Behaviour Support – thus – there were no ‘mistakes’ that could be made and thus each child was able to join in with singing, playing instruments, using routine and repetition to reinforce learning already acquired and support new skills and on-going learning.

All of the children in both groups were able to ‘play’ alongside their parents and grandparents and interact with others.  No child was too afraid to be a part of the group and all were able to show natural curiosity in their own way and in their own time.  The children showed that they were able to learn from each other.  One little girl took huge pleasure in helping a younger member of the group to take part and another little boy engaged in the group for the very first time.  The positive responses received from Peggy and his mother will, without doubt, ensure that he feels able to repeat this engagement – we learn best when the outcome is positive.    It is clear that the children and all those attending the group are learning to learn for life – positively.

These skills are without price – to join together with parents and grandparents and to learn from each other – also helps and nourishes all of us – reducing our own anxieties and helping us to realise that we are not alone and can work together towards the future and to turn all the challenges we experience into opportunities.”

What’s Next

We are very much looking forward to working with Coral to enhance the resources available to our children and their families and to complement our Funtrain experience. Early learning and intervention can make the most enormous difference to us all and we are hopeful that the work we do together can help to be transformative and fun and help towards building positive futures for all our children.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and in the meantime, keep an eye out on our Facebook and Instagram pages for the latest updates and developments on this exciting partnership.