Book Review: Early Childhood and Neuroscience – Mine Conkbayir

Even the foreword is interesting (delivered courtesy of Prof. Colewyn Trevarthen) and serves to give positionality and purpose to Mine’s writing and research context.

Early Years Seminar – 7th November 2017

The superb exhibition space developed and set up by our Owl Class Team Leader J, focusing on exploring, investigating and understanding the wonderful world around us.

Best Practice Exhibition – Woodside Community Hub (Norwich)

I was lucky enough to secure a late tour session with the super Sally Thomas to view the latest in the series of best practice spaces she has developed in collaboration with Norfolk County Council’s Early Years Achievement Team.

Training: Excellence in Literacy, Science and Mathematics

From early mathematical skills to learning to code, story-telling and meaning making as part of literacy development and a keen enthusiasm for exploring and investigating the world around – I thoroughly enjoyed this training given by Norfolk County Council.

Give a child a typewriter and they will create worlds

I had a wonderful conversation with my grandparents a few months ago, about the types of things I liked to play with as a child. We chatted about paint, paper, notebooks and huge canvases (plentiful in a house full of artists and teachers) before moving on to things children find in the garden and the beliefs children have (fairies, mythical creatures, etc…); as a professional the conversation gave me the opportunity to consider whether the resources within my setting instigated the sort of quality play I wanted children to experience. One of the items I remember very vividly from my childhood was an old typewriter.

How do you encourage children to be globally empathetic?

Last week I retweeted a friend’s intention to “Live Below The Line” in aid of the charity International Service. She hopes to raise £800 by living on just £5.74 a week – calculated using poverty baseline of $1.25 a day – including all of her food, drink and travelling costs. You can read about her experiences and inspiration here; if you’re feeling particularly altruistic today, you can support this worthy cause here.

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Frederick Douglass

But what does this have to do with early years education, aside from the obvious concern that children in developing countries have yet to access quality early years education universally? Within the foundation stage, practitioners are encouraging children to empathise with and to give consideration to others’ feelings, needs and wishes. Usually this is an informal process, using everyday events as “learning opportunities”; occasionally fraught with tears (“but I WANT that fire engine!”) it can be an emotionally exhausting process as you filter and reflect the behaviour you want children to replicate independently (“he’s sad because I hit him… That wasn’t kind, was it? Sorry.”)