Author: Flinders University Childcare

At Flinders, we spend a lot of time thinking, talking, wondering, inspiring, dreaming, observing, planning for, assessing and documenting play. We live and breathe play. Indoor play, outdoor play, nature play, arts-based play, block play, socio-dramatic play, experimental play, creative play, imaginative play, sensory play; any kind of play you can think of, we want to know about it. We. Love. Play. But sometimes there is a difference in understanding about the role of play in children’s learning, and what we mean at Flinders when we talk about play. Over the next couple of weeks on Our Million Opportunities, we are going to delve deeply into the idea of play as a context for learning. We will share with you a range of articles, videos, and our personal reflections, on the role of play in children’s lives. Because play is much more than fun for children. Play is how children engage, how they begin to understand their place in the world. Play is how children make authentic connections between ideas and concepts, enabling long term success in learning. Play is how children learn. The Early Years Learning Framework marks play as a key practice for early childhood educators, recognising play as a context for learning. The EYLF discusses play as follows; Learning Through Play Play provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise and imagine. When children play with other children they create social groups, test out ideas, challenge each other’s thinking and build new understandings. PlayRead more

Over the last couple of months we have seen a number of days with a severe weather warning. This has a significant impact on the programs at Flinders, as we need to go from an indoor-outdoor curriculum to an exclusively indoor one. There are a number of reasons why we remain inside during severe weather warnings, most significantly due to the many beautiful trees we enjoy in our outdoor environments. We are guided by the Bureau of Meteorology in making decisions about when it is safe for us to go outdoors and when it is best to avoid it. The Flinders children absolutely love heading outside in all kinds of weather, and most of the time we do abide by the philosophy “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing” but these warning days are the exception. Educators and children all work exceptionally hard on severe weather warning days, finding ways to be engaged in an exclusively indoor environment. We try to remain engaged with the natural environment without actually being a part of it, such as watching the weather through the windows, listening to the sounds of the storms, and sharing stories (both our own and in books) about interesting weather we have experienced. We have found this year that the more informed children are about the severe weather warnings, the more able they are to adjust their expectations and manage a day inside. Children from May Mills House have been calling the office to findRead more

As you know, at the beginning of the year the South Australian government implemented a single school intake for public schools. This had a significant impact on Flinders. Traditionally we have transitioned four times each year, at the beginning of each term, as children left for school. This year, we had one enormous transition at the beginning of the school year, with nearly all children in each group transitioning to the next house. This was a huge process, logistically and emotionally, for the children, educators and families of Flinders. We had faith that it would pay off in the long run, with each house having a stable group of children for a twelve month period. Over the last couple of months, the benefits for children have become crystal clear. We are seeing deeper relationships developing between children and educators. We are seeing deeper engagement for children within the educational programs. And perhaps most excitingly, we are seeing deeper relationships between children, and a genuine culture of kindness and respect emerging across Flinders. We spend a lot of time talking about the Flinders community, and the impact of the single transition has really highlighted this. Not only are families and educators developing strong partnerships, the children are demonstrating sophisticated levels of empathy and compassion with each other. From handing a friend their hat, to comforting a friend who feels sad; from offering moral support, to asking someone who seems alone to play, the children of Flinders are becoming increasingly caring, compassionate andRead more

At Flinders, we have a strong culture of play and play based learning built on contemporary early childhood theory. But not everything we do at Flinders is play based; there are a number of aspects of our program that are work based, outcomes based, and task oriented. Regular experiences such as cooking and gardening cannot be considered play in the sense of early childhood theory; these experiences are not exclusively ‘pleasurable, self motivated, process oriented, symbolic, active and voluntary’ (Lennie Barblett, Why Play Based Learning?). They have clear guidelines and boundaries which are defined by educators, and are only available for certain periods of time. Children work collaboratively with an educator towards a particular goal and the product is as important as the process. The integration of these kinds of work based experiences within a play based program gives children an opportunity to learn new and important skills and processes, to be involved in different kinds of tasks, and to develop different kinds of community relationships. The task oriented nature of the experiences leads to explicit teaching opportunities relating to health and hygiene practices, safety, turn taking and cooperation. The guidelines for participation in this kind of experience are clear; children know that this is not a time for play but a time for work, and whilst it is fun and we do gain a significant sense of satisfaction from the process, participation is dependent on working within certain guidelines. As these guidelines are generally related to personal and group safety, health andRead more

As we have mentioned in previous posts, Flinders will be presenting at the Early Childhood Australia Biennial Conference in Melbourne in September this year. We are extremely excited about and grateful to have this opportunity, not only to present our work in relation to the Making our Mark project, but also to be a part of the professional learning community that will be attending the four day event. Educators from Flinders have attending ECA Conferences in the past and have come back feeling inspired and excited about their experience, ready to find ways to translate new ideas and theories into practice at Flinders. We will be presenting on the Saturday of the conference, and our paper is titled Making our Mark. The Making our Mark project has been discussed in previous posts on this blog, so head back through our history to find out a little more. As a part of the preparation process for the paper presentation, the Programming Educators have been involved in an intense one month period of writing, meeting and thinking hard about the data we have collected so far. As we have reflected, thought, conversed and challenged ourselves and each other, we have come to some very exciting new ideas and understandings about the role of mark making in children’s learning, our role in facilitating mark making experiences, and how various theories can act as lenses through which we can analyse our work. Without giving the entire paper away, we are looking forward to sharing ourRead more

As regular readers and members of the Flinders Community would be aware, we are very interested in outdoor play and winter outdoor play. Preschool and Sturt House both run successful winter play programs, and May Mills House are beginning their journey this year. But there is another house of educators and children who are interested in learning more…what would happen if we took the babies out to play? We wanted to share with you a video of babies engaged in rain play, but we couldn’t quite find the right one, the one that really resonated with us. So instead we have made a pinterest board to inspire us, we would love you to take a look at it by clicking on the link below… http://www.pinterest.com/flinderschild/babies-in-the-rain/ What do you think?

Over the past couple of months the Programming Educators and Assistant Directors at Flinders have been exploring the image of the child. What does this idea mean? What is our image of the child? What does the Flinders child look like? How does this impact on our practice and programs? An interesting journey… We began by exploring what the phrase ‘image of the child’ means. Originating in the Reggio Emilia philosophy, the image of the child corresponds to people’s beliefs about who children are and what they can do. Not individual children, but children broadly. So when we talk about the image of the child we are talking about all children; not just a quality or personality trait or disposition that is a part of one child’s character. The image of the child informs all areas of our practice, be it consciously or unconsciously. Because the image of the child has such a significant impact on our practice, we began to explore some descriptors, some terms that could encapsulate our collective image of children. This is a complex process to undertake within a group of educators; so much of this is about values and attitudes. Yet we recognise that having a statement or series of terms that we all agreed clarified our collective image of the child, a definition of the Flinders child, could helps us to support children, educators and families in new an interesting ways. We could use this statement as a touchstone to refer to in ourRead more