Interaction Imagination

18 months ago I engaged in a dialogue in an Australian group about whether or not children should stay at the lunch table when they had finished eating... there were a lot of people saying no , they should not, and also a lot saying yes, they should... I am more of a "well it depends kind of person..." this was my reply... "it really does depend... if the child is a fast eater and the others are all terribly slow eaters maybe yes but if the child is avoiding eating to go d

Another post sharing inspiration and reflections from AnjiPlay in China... this time with a focus on Sand and water play to find out more about the construction materials why not check out Construction Play or just click onto the tag or category AnjiPlay to find all the other posts I have written so far... What I noticed was that these were not small sandboxes. The schools had made the considered decision to create sand areas that are both expansive AND deep so that the child

(blå text är på svenska) I have always liked collaborative art... of working together... I find that often the focus is on the individual, which is an essential part of working as an educator... to see each individual child and to enable them to reach their potential... but individuals live, work and play in groups, so they need to work out how to be themselves in not just one group, but in a variety of groups and social situations. Together art gives children the opportuni

So how comfortable are you adding to the work of others...? here is what some teachers wrote down at one of the workshops at Boulder Journey School in the summer of 2013... I appreciated having a blueprint or framework to build from/on the work inspired me it was an interesting concept to add to someone elses work/art - feeling like you were misrepresenting their idea it makes me feel uncomfortable adding to or modifying someone elses work. Collaborating makes me feel more

Over the years I have worked in places that have had dysfunctional groups as well as groups that have played well together. I have often reflected over what makes a group work. How do we support a functional group? How do we give children the freedom to play? I define a dysfunctional group as stressed, focussed on the problems of maybe one, two or more children disrupting play for whatever reasons so that play does not flow as usual. It made me realise just how much struc

Every once in a while I see posts about the benefits of hugs (touch) and babies... and just how it impacts the brain and development of the child. Often these posts are shared in groups/pages about early childhood education, and most often as a reaction to the fact that some settings are writing no-hug policies. While I think physical contact is incredibly important to the well-being and development of each child, I talked about this several times in Athens, both in my keyn

We often talk about being co-researchers with the children, but I also think that we are co-documenters - especially in the sense of the Reggio Emilia approach sense of pedagogical documentation... I do not feel that we should be producing documentation FOR the children, but WITH the children. And if we are collecting data by documenting the children through photos, note-taking, filming, audio, collecting work etc together with the children and then analysing that with coll

Today I will look at taking photos... I remember back in the nineties when I started working in preschools how we used cameras to document what we were doing and what the children were learning. I can openly admit that back in those days there was a lot more focus on what we were doing, a kind of record of our activities to show the parents ... I feel like I have come a long way in the last 25 years. I now use photography in many different ways... and I am so incredibly gra