The motto of my nursery class: "Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, and snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." John Ruskin 1819-1900
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I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to work in our partner kindergarten in Norway over the Easter break, it was the perfect chance to spend time in the kindergarten without having to get cover for my own class while I was away. 4 of us in total took part in this job shadowing experience, 2 of us from N. Ireland and 2 from Croatia and as we all lived together for the 2 weeks it allowed for…
The original wooden building has had a beautiful new build added to it. *In December 2020 the U.K government withdrew from the EU funded Erasmus programme, despite assurances during and after the whole Brexit campaign and vote that this would not affect the U.K's participation. (After all many non EU countries already participate) It came as a complete shock to all involved and it proved to be yet…
"Early Childhood is important in its own righting not merely a preparation for later learning. Learning begins at birth and continues throughout life" Tovey H. (2017) Bringing the Froebel Approach to your Early Years Practice p125 I am now 3 sessions in to my Froebel in childhood practice certificate and each online session just strengthens my desire to describe my own practice as Froebelian. It…
I have now been lighting a fire with my nursery class for over 10 years and at this point it feels very much part of the routine of the class. Before we ever light an actual fire we spend time teaching the children how to move safely around the fire, so as a class we sit round the fire pit and practise how to move seats by walking around the back of the seating area and not moving across the are…
"Play is the highest level of child development. It is the spontaneous expression of thought and feeling.....This is the meaning of the word 'play'..." Froebel (1826)in Lilley (1967), p.83-4 For those who are new to my blog or don't know my story, here is a short synopsis. I went back in 1999 to do my PGCE in Primary Education after years of resisting the pull of teaching. You can read more about…
The Numberland Numbers from Haba. In November 2020 I was fortunate to watch an episode of Early Years TV where Kathy Brodie interviewed Barbara Schindelhauer from Numberland. I just loved Barbara's enthusiasm for maths and the concept of Numberland really appealed to me as it encouraged deeper thinking about numbers and attributes of number than just by colour, shape or size. You can visit…
So here in N. Ireland we are back to online learning as schools are closed to the majority of pupils. Moving online this Lockdown should been more manageable for most as schools have spent the last few months upskilling staff and pupils for this very situation - even though we would all prefer to teach face to face any day. Play with water outdoors to explore match and science. In preschool a lot…
We made it - my class survived the first term in nursery during a worldwide pandemic and man do I feel like I have dodged a huge moving juggernaut. I am fortunate to have lots of fellow educators around the world to connect with and share ideas, compare notes and tease out solutions to problems. I would have been lost without the friendship and support of these people the last few months as we…
Early Years people are great at finding solutions, we generally don't wait around for others to tell us what to do, we go off and find ways to make things happen for ourselves. This became very apparent to me recently during the months before we returned to school after lockdown. I attended lots of on line seminars and workshops and realised that I enjoyed the ones attended by fellow early years…
The 27 children have all settled into nursery over the past few weeks. This week has been their first in the big class after spending almost 4 weeks in smaller groups of 15 and 12 for just 2 hours a day. This week and next they will be staying for 3 hours before starting full time from the 12th October (all going well!) We are normally outside every morning for at least an hour and have 2 outdoor…
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