Overzicht
Stimulating and restoring the social- emotional development of children
BVS-schooladvies, the educationale guidance organisation for Waldorf schools in The Netherlands, has developed the Rainbow Approach in order to stimulate and restore the social- emotional development of children. This enables education professionals to practise social skills within the class. With this approach, based on the anthroposophical view of the human being, we are able to equip educators with a teaching resource focused on wholistically working with the students’ hands, heart and head. In Summer 2025 we published the English translation of the original Dutch version of the Rainbow Approach. The book contains resources for students, parents and educators.
You will also find further information regarding the underlying principles, our credentials and professional background in the book, as well as the Rainbow Game and the observational framework of the students’ social-emotional development.
The Anthroposophical understanding of social-emotional development will support the social-emotional develoment of the students in your care.
It is also possible to order the Game Fan. For further information please see our leaflet.
Inhoud
The Rainbow Approach
Flexibility versus not knowing how to react
Everyone who works with children has moments of feeling incompetent, thinking, ‘What can I do?’ Our knowledge, experience and skills suddenly seem to have disappeared. What you encounter unexpectedly is capricious and does not fit into theoretical frameworks. That is what makes the profession so challenging. Suddenly, one has to deal with children that are upset or not open to reasoning. Various group processes often come into play here. This may be hard for parents and teachers to deal with.
Children’s social development
Becoming resilient to teasing and bullying
Preschoolers first learn to become resilient; learn to articulate a question and learn to share. Behaviour is aimed at their own development rather than with, or against, others. A child who is grabbing a toyblock out of another child’s hands because it wants to play with it is not engaged in a purposeful action against the other child. The other child just happens to have the desired block and accidentally becomes a victim.
When children reach primary school age, they start to compete, measure their strength and challenge each other by teasing and exploring boundaries. The latter by playing pranks, for example. Teasing happens occasionally. Usually, there is a balance of power, a child is allowed to stand up for him/herself in the process and there are no negative consequences.
Teasing or bullying
Sometimes teasing slips into bullying, for example, by excluding. Bullying is structural. There is an unequal situation, there is a difference in power. The same child is always affected. Bullying can have major negative consequences; it is damaging to a person’s biography. In the literature on bullying, a distinction is usually made between direct bullying and indirect bullying. Direct bullying includes hitting, kicking, scolding, or taking things away. Indirect bullying refers to gossiping, excluding or giving someone a bad reputation, both verbally and online.
Unexpected behaviour
A child who is showing misbehaviour at school may have an internal conflict between what his “peers” tell her/him to do and what the school expects. There could be a conflict between what the group tells her/him to do, for example, ‘to be rude’, and what the parents tell it to do, for example, ‘being good, paying attention’. Therefore, the school can’t achieve anything with social education without involving the parents and taking them seriously. When parents are invited and involved with the school and are supporting the approach to a behavioural problem, things often improve quickly for a child. Parents, both of the bullying and bullied child, can work together with the teacher to see how to break through the behaviour pattern.
We are convinced that every child strives for the best and that its behaviour can be seen like a coat you can put on or take off. We, their parents and educators, can help them to change coats.
Our Rainbow Approach consists of several tools which we use in our trainings:
- Rainbow Training the trainer programme
- How to create a series of lessons
- How to use the game fan
- Reader The Rainbow Approach
Rainbow Training the Trainer programme
With the Rainbow Training the Trainer programme, teachers learn to work with Rainbow themselves in their classrooms. By being trained as the complete team in the Rainbow approach, a school ensures that the team as a whole stands for the social-emotional development, and cares about all children in the school. Teachers help each other and, in doing so, model to the children an implicit example of living and working together.
Excercises for teachers
The exemplary role model of the teacher plays an important role in the whole social skills development. How can you expect social behaviour from children if you don’t practise it yourself, or don’t practise it strongly enough? The Rainbow programme contains exercises in which the teacher gains experiences that increase the arsenal of unconscious knowledge. Knowing ‘what to do in unexpected situations’ increases. Practising, reflecting on one’s own actions and exchanging with other teachers is indispensable here.
How to create a series of lessons
The course includes the Preventive Approach, to create a series of lessons. Research shows that social skills lessons are already important in the lowe grades. Studies on bullying prove that this leads to fewer bullies and victims in the higher grades. From a preventive point of view, the obvious approach is to start with the younger age groups in particular. The Rainbow Approach targets all children from pre-school to grade 8.
How to use the Game fan
These are card games full of creative exercises and games to guide social processes. Pleasant, enjoyable situations are created in which children practise being social. The games are scheduled structurally. When the children enter the classroom agitated after a break, when there has been an argument, or the whole group gets stuck in a yes-no discussion, the teacher can immediately choose a game or exercise from the Rainbow play in order to change the atmosphere in a creative and positive way.
The training is suitable for all teachers, teachers from kindergarten to class 8. We also offer customization, a programme tailored to the needs of the team.
