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"If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.” Alfie Kohn

In the Reggio inspired approach there is lots of work to be done on developing our own image of the child and discovering what it is about each individual that makes them capable learners. Our own experiences as children, parents and educators shape what this can be and it's important to recognise the strengths and capabilities our individual children have. 

I believe that young children are capable of high levels of engagement in their learning. But how can they show this if i'm always the one deciding what we should do around the agenda I have as an adult? Doing this sets them up to fail.

Therefore my understanding of the child must be backed up by the practice and environment I create. This can be done by really listening to the child and exploring the curiosities they have and discover what drives them to know more. 

This can be done by identify...

Guest Post by childminder Jodie Williams @jodiewilliamschildminding 

Teaching children about nature and giving them the opportunity to be outdoors exploring is a very important part of our day. I found the child thrived when doing outdoor activities especially in the local woodland areas.

They love to collect objects, bringing them back to the setting and incorporating them into their play and exploration.

Over the past year it has become more important to be able to be outdoors, exploring in our own little group setting. Which has helped all of us to cope with the current pandemic & changes.

This is why I have now started to change how I teach and the resources I use. I haven’t got much space to store lots of one use resources. So this change has definitely allowed me to minimise resources to ones that provide the most learning opportunities.

We now have a lovely collection of natural resources. A variety of baskets containing small logs, log slices, stones, & sticks. Also ...

I know through my interactions with you online that many of you would like a little bit of support in setting up a provocation. 

Firstly I hear you ask, what is a provocation? A provocation can come in many different forms, but it is always intended to provoke thoughts, ideas, and actions that can help to expand on a thought, project, idea or an interest. These are an important aspect of child led learning seen in the Reggio Emilia Approach. By setting up a provocation we are allowing young children to see, experience and make decisions about the world themselves through their own explorations. It could be from a book, a photograph, interesting objects. The interaction with the provocation can involve problem solving, working imaginatively, form new ideas and make their own conclusions. 

As the provocations are open ended with the concept of the child finding their own answers rather than being told them there is no right or wrong outcome from working here. The process of the learnin...

What does a purposeful learning environment look and feel like for the under 2’s?

Your environment for this age range needs to be very different than that offered for a 3-4 year old.

Its about setting up cosy nooks with a basket of books and hand puppets, treasury baskets to explore holistic play, a little space that represents home life to them with dramatic play equipment (dolls, cooking utensils, shopping baskets, phones etc), different platforms to work on at varying heights that allow them to squat, stand and explore things like loose parts/ twisting/ manipulating objects on a larger scale. Opportunities to explore light, dark, shadow, projection. Magnatiles and other construction are wonderful to include too! Consider sensory play too; perhaps a tuff tray on the floor. A space to rest with calming fairy lights in jars or a projector.

There is also the need for outdoor play for this age range! Check out this post here for more information here on getting babies outside. 

Most i...

I have had a fascination with rocks from a young age. I was always the child with my pockets full of natural treasures and would spend hours looking at what I had collected, sorting them into egg boxes or making patterns with my natural finds.

I remember as a child taking a visit with my Grandparents to the North Yorkshire sea-side town of Whitby and a shop keeper handing my a tiny piece of the gemstone Jet to admire. I loved the A school trip a few weeks later was a visit to Stump Cross Cavens, a series of underground caves in North Yorkshire which left me curious wanting to know more. 

For my 7th Birthday that year I had asked for a subscription to a magazine called Treasures of the Earth. With each monthly magazine came a different rock or gemstone to admire and learn about. When I received the Pyrite (Fools Gold) I remember being in awe of it's sparkles. 

Another fond memory I have is of my Grandad bringing home a bag of beach pebbles from the garden centre. I spent hours pickin...

The days are starting to get longer and brighter and new shoots are poking through the soil. It feels so good that Spring is on it's way!

Now feels like a good time to share some of my favourite spring resources and books (as i get asked this question a lot!) to support your nature based play. All of the resources I share on here are my personal recommendations and are not advertisements.  It is also worth noting that it has taken a few years to collect the bought resources I show in the photos and nature based play can be done so effectively without any of these too! Just get outside and use the nature around you like we did when creating our Very Hungry Caterpillars out of twigs and leaves. 

I often get asked on my training around nature based play if this is something that can be done if you're in an urban area and the answer is yes! We can do nature study by opening up the curtains and watching the birds from our window, setting up a provocation on the northern lights inside...

Here are some of my followers favourite ways to make Christmas time more magical for the children.

'Add fairy lights everywhere' Mrspodmed

'Create an activity advent calendar' s28xoxo

'Make cranberry sauce with the children and give them a jar to take home and share on Christmas Day' Acorn_Class

'Have a North Pole tea party with twinkling lights' Dawnwebster29

'Dress up and sing Christmas songs together' Seafoam_green

'We have a nativity advent and each day we add to a wooden nativity scene' katmurphy81

'Sprinkle the children with magic dust from Santa as they leave school for the holiday' amberlou_d

'Family walks in the woods' nerdishmum

'We have a Christmas story that we read a chapter a day of and do an activity related to it' Littleonesatplay

'The children help to decorate the tree' Sarahs_littlestars

'We have a Christmas movie night with the projector and snacks' Laura_diamond_childminder

For more Christmas Child Led Ideas check out my training here.

Our journey started with a statement from our Ofsted inspector

“Follow your hearts”.

For years my son and I had been working towards blending our family values into our early years setting. We love to upcycle, hate to waste, love the environment and wanted to create a nursery in this image. For years we had been blindfolded, like fish in a bowl we never got to see what life was like outside our own little nursery bubble. When we would receive advice from our Early Years Team or other nurseries in our area it never felt natural to us, it always felt like fitting into a biscuit mould, all the same and no essence of ourselves.

For years we had done everything right, by the book, creative and forward thinking but shackled by the frameworks and policies of a government falling slowly behind the times. Our nursery was beautiful but we had started to move towards more natural, open ended, ethically sourced resources. We had begun to shed the norm and started looking for an approach that ha...