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

(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

Those of you who have followed me for many years will know that I have been working with children using philosophy with children... not a specific approach such as P4C (philosophy 4 children) or Socratic Dialogue, but something that I have created myself together with my various colleagues over the years. Mostly because none of these techniques I felt, as a whole, could meet the specific needs of the children I was working with... in part due to the fact most is written about

Listen with your ears, eyes, heart and mind. This is how I start a philosophy session with my preschoolers. A simple reminder that there is not one way to listen... not even with listening is there a single story. Many of the activities I did with the children was to give the children time and opportunity to practice their listening skills... to listen with their ears, to listen with their eyes, to listen with their hearts and to listen with their minds. I want to live in a w

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

I often see how teachers have an understanding of situations and a knowing of how to proceed that can be hard to define where this wisdom comes from... its not directly from books, but from an intrinsic understanding of their profession. for example: "- it is tricky. and I have to say, a lot of it does just come from experience. In the example I gave above about the boy who did not respond to his name being called, I just "knew", from that very first day, that I was looking a

Often stories talk about the big, bad wolf... there is Red Riding Hood and the Three Little pigs to get you started... this has meant that in dialogues about animals wolves are always seen as bad. This fascinated me that the children would see things as wholly bad and wholly good - and when exploring friendship, relationships, empathy and emotions - this concept of good and bad can be really interesting. The thing is wolves are really expressive, so they are a great example