SAGA for Toddlers

Supporting Social and Emotional Development in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with focus on children aged 1-2 years.
The project

SAGA for Toddlers is a research and development project that aims to support young children’s socio-emotional development, language and communication skills through shared storybook reading with mentalizing dialogues in ECEC and in collaboration with the guardians.

Social-emotional development in young children refers to the growing ability to recognize, name and regulate their emotions, to empathise and understand the emotions of others, and to manage social relationships. Socio-emotional development is related to language and communication skills and responsive interaction with caregivers. 
The aim of the project

The SAGA model is based on regular shared reading sessions with children in small groups, with fairy tales and stories that touched on emotions. The SAGA model emphasises the importance of relationship skills and to support parents' understanding of the importance of reading picture books with their children. SAGA for toddlers promotes language learning in Swedish through translanguaging pedagogy, using the different languages present in the group to clarify the meaning of words and terms.

SAGA for Toddlers focuses on strengthening the ability to identify and name emotions, supporting the professional development and relational skills of ECEC teachers and personnel, and increasing parents’ understanding of the impact of storybook reading on language- and socio-emotional skills. Based on previous research, the hypotheses of SAGA for toddlers are that pedagogical thoughtful dialogue built around the reading of fairy tales and stories intended to strengthen emotional language use is:   

  1. an effective method to support children's socio-emotional development
  2. an effective method to support children's language development
  3. an effective method to support children's well-being in the group by increasing the pedagogues´ mentalisation skills and language awareness
  4. an effective method to increase reading in families with children under school age through parental support  

Shared storybook reading according to the SAGA-model has shown to be a simple and appealing method according to the personnel in ECEC. SAGA for Toddlers develops the method to support the language, communication and the socio-emotional skills of younger children, thereby supporting general learning skills and school success.
Cooperation and funding

SAGA for toddlers cooperates with public ECEC centres in Southern Finland

The project is funded by Svenska kulturfonden.