Transition to school: A primary perspective

Transition to school: a primary perspective

‘As an early childhood and primary teacher, I enjoy working with children of all ages. In this chapter of my career, I find myself gaining behind-the-scenes insight into the primary school environment that the preschoolers I used to teach…
Why is the Reggio Emilia project so important for early learning environments in Australia?

Why is the Reggio Emilia project so important for early learning environments in Australia?

Why is the Reggio Emilia educational project—which exists in a context so far removed from ours, culturally, politically and geographically—so important in our Australian context? While this project now has networks in many countries around…
ART

Thinking about meanings of sustainability

What does sustainability mean to you? Is there one right way to think about sustainability? The term sustainability has increasingly become part of everyday language e.g. sustainable investments, sustainable growth, sustainable harvesting, and,…
Children’s literature as a gateway to reading

Children’s literature as a gateway to reading

Children’s lives are enriched by literature. Picture books support children’s understanding of the thoughts, feelings and motivations of other people, and teach them new facts about their world, which plays an important role in their linguistic,…
Children’s right to play

Children’s right to play

‘No-one is born a good citizen’ said Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General. But children are born with rights. This blog explores children’s rights and how they are identified in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children’s…
Who is the child?

Who is the child?

On an international study tour to Reggio Emilia 20 years ago, a question boldly crossed the screen in the first lecture. KAREN SZYDLIK, the Professional Learning Coordinator with Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange (REAIE), reflects…
Play-based learning can set your child up for success at school and beyond

Play-based learning can set your child up for success at school and beyond

As the new school year begins, many families are deciding where to enrol their child in preschool or school. Preschools and schools offer various approaches to early education, all promoting the benefits of their particular programs. One…
Live and learn: living spaces

Live and learn: living spaces

As summer heat drives us inside we revisit concepts from an ECA Research in Practice Series, Living Spaces—Indoor learning environments written by Luke Touhill. Young children’s play is so much deeper than the ‘game’ visible to adults…
Supporting language development in the early years

Supporting language development in the early years

Take a moment to imagine what it would be like to look at the words on this page and not be able to comprehend the meaning these words have collectively. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. According to the 2016 Census, 21 per cent of Australians…
Routines: Opportunities for learning and connecting

Routines: Opportunities for learning and connecting

Routines are a big part of our lives. They give us order and stability and the reassurance that comes from reliable, consistent patterns of activity. They support us to regulate our lives in a world that is often fast-paced and busy. And they…
Children’s right to play and its benefits

Children’s right to play and its benefits

Play. We think we all agree on what it is when we talk about it. But it has no agreed definition (Burghardt, 2011; Sutton-Smith, 1997), and unless we can describe what play is—and is not—we will struggle to describe how it leads to learning.…
Find the time for meaningful documentation

Find the time for meaningful documentation

The age old debate in children’s services about the time available for the completion of documentation versus time spent with children has been long standing in our sector. This often divides the sector as some view that you must either choose…