The Importance Of Vocational Orientation For Children

Vocational orientation for children aims to allow children to express themselves freely about the activities and experiences they like and which make them feel happy. In other words, it is a process that identifies occupations based on children’s choices, games they play and how they relate to others.

To understand what vocational orientation for children is about, we must first understand the overall concept.

What is career orientation?

Many adults may admit that they did not all dare to choose their jobs or professions based on their real interests. Instead, many of us have made choices based on family requirements, cultural factors, fear, or simply a lack of knowledge.

All of these factors can lead to studying for a degree or embarking on a career that has had nothing to do with what you really like or have a talent for.

This is where career orientation would have been very helpful. It helps individuals define their future career choices. In other words , it allows young people to identify their beliefs, perceptions, feelings, thoughts and activities that they express or do.

Vocational orientation tries to help young people find the right university education and professions. This knowledge and insight includes information about the labor market as well as necessary skills.

In addition, it helps to highlight the youth’s own interests and matches a person’s innate and acquired abilities with a specific area or profession.

The important role of vocational guidance for children

For young people, vocational guidance is not about deciding or conditioning their future job or profession. It is rather a tool that helps them express their motives and goals, as it offers opportunities and tips on activities that can reveal their preferences.

For children’s career orientation, the type of games, and the observations one can make of them, are the most important for discovering the children’s interests. Which toys they choose and how they use and play with them are important indicators. All contribute to career orientation from an early age.

There are children who choose more physical or sports-related games and games. Others prefer strategic board games or those that involve logic. Some children arrange toys in order, classify them and categorize them. Others take apart everything they get their hands on and study things from the inside out.

In addition, there are children who prefer to build with bricks and clay. And others like symbolic games and act out everyday situations.

The games and games that children choose help to discern their preferences and abilities. This also reveals how they relate to others. Some children prefer to play alone, while others enjoy company.

Some people have more fun when they invent new games or play with simple everyday objects. At the same time, there are children who prefer a piece of fabric or a cardboard box, a box or a cube.

Activity corners as a tool for vocational orientation for children

These are spaces where children can perform different learning activities in small groups in parallel. This method is based on free choice, curiosity and observation.

Depending on age, there may be different corners with specific educational purposes and concrete games and activities. Each of these corners contains their respective materials, objects and toys.

It is important for teachers to plan, organize and develop activity corners in a controlled way. They then offer greater opportunities for different types of expressive, cognitive, motor and sensory play and experimenting with materials. It gives children greater opportunities to discover their personal preferences and talents… which are also indicators of career orientation.

The importance of vocational orientation for children

In the classroom, teachers can design the following activity corners:

• Construction. Blocks, Lego pieces, clay etc.
• Symbolic games. Kitchen, mother-father-child, car workshop, hair salon, doctor’s office, fire station, costumes, etc.
• Artistic activities. Finger paint, watercolors, tempera paintings, felt-tip pens, etc.
• Music and dance activities. Here you can have real instruments and also other objects that you can use to create music with.

• Reading and writing corners where children can read exciting books and write stories.
• Board games and logic games, computer activities.
• A corner to develop gross motor skills. Games and games that involve body movements.
• Nature activities. Activities involving objects from nature and the environment. For example, water, soil, seeds, pots with plants, animals, etc.
• A corner of invention. Promote free and spontaneous play where children can create and invent toys and objects. Teachers can provide recycled materials and other materials such as old clothes, cardboard, plastic, wheels, etc.

In summary

From the time children are very young, it is important to discover and get to know their preferences and talents. In addition, adults should offer them the opportunity to express their orientations and career opportunities.

The purpose of vocational orientation for children is not to find an exact match between an interest and a profession. In other words, it’s not about stating that a child will become a nurse just because he likes to play with dolls… Or that a little girl will become a football player just because she likes to play football.

Of course, that may be the case. But career orientation is about letting the child lead the way based on his preferences and feelings.

Vocational orientation for children is intended to allow children and young people to express their preferences and have fun. It is also intended to help adults discover children’s abilities and talents in order to encourage and work with them.