There are 7 webinars on offer, you can dip in and out of them for up to 1 year and you are not required to watch all 7 - just whatever is relevant to you.

See details of the webinar content below - 

1. Agitate your practice 

It is time to lead our practice, the way we engage our children, forward.

We need to step off the wheel.

Provoke, Stir Up and whisk in new approaches!

In this session we will

Consider our Play invitations.

Instead of Home Corner being what it always is, let’s explore The Hall, The Cupboard under the Stairs or the Garage to encourage interaction and engagement.

Reading and Research

Develop our ideas around two current pieces of research, including a piece on the importance of children using their hands and the impact it has on their mental wellbeing.

The Alpha Child

What should play look like for them? Curriculum is our WHAT, Pedagogy is our HOW, but our children are our WHY! We must start with them and what they NEED what we think they should have.

2. Innovate for today, tomorrow and the future

All the statistics suggest our percentages of literacy, numeracy and scientific understanding is lower than ever before.

Our children are struggling to concentrate, pay attention, stay on task.

It is time to use innovative ideas, for our materials to be shared and presented in different ways to promote and provoke alternative responses.

In this session we will:

Initiate two or three techniques of reengaging our children’s interests and excitement in role play.

Introduce a wealth of ideas around developing skills and dispositions for play.

Explore how we might create Maker Spaces for tinkering and tampering, moving STEM play into the future.

Invent new ways of using DOTS and LINES to stimulate each child’s imagination.

3. Babbling with babies and talking with toddlers

Our babies and toddlers need to be offered opportunities to enable them to learn and practice the skills that they need to develop to become an effective communicator.

All staff should be aware of the need to focus on the voice, the sounds, the speech and the language of our littlest children.

During the training a selection of approaches to encourage adult child interaction will be explored.  ‘Tools’ such as contingent talk, dialogic reading and pole bridging will be explored.

Delegates will explore simple conversations, talking for instruction, talking thoughts and complex conversations skills.

The session will merge the theory and thinking into practice. Many practical ideas will be shared.

4. It's marvellous to be 2

If we are to believe that ‘nature’ is the dominant influence on a youngest children’s learning and development we would have assumed the inborn characteristics, learning abilities and personality determine what sort of person we become.

If we believe the nature argument, we assume that development is dependent on the way a young child is raised, the type of play and involvement they engage in and the level of stimulation they experience during early childhood.

Imagine what can happen when both are blended!

This training programme will explore the importance of both. Each session will reflect on the need for us to understand and support the thinking and theory around every young child’s innate talent, the environments and experiences they are exposed and the pedagogy we develop to support this.

In this session we will consider

• The potential of genetic structure on aspects of development
• Interactions and experiences to support and scaffold development.
• The role the adult plays in the engagement of sensitive, loving and exciting play.

This session will also be weaving theory and thinking into practice.

We will:

• Develop an awareness of how to shape sensitive interactions.
• Expand our understanding of flexible play experiences.
• Begin to interpret the actions, emotions and words and how that impacts play.

5. Little People in the Land of Giants - small world play

 

Through their natural curiosity and by providing them with a

Wide variety of activities and experiences in play, children begin to develop a range of skills and concepts including observation, experimentation and free exploration of their surroundings. 

 

Small world is an area of play where children can become lost, can be created from anything and everything. This session will consider how small world can help support.

• A breadth of language skills
• Expressive and descriptive language
• Problem solving skills.
• Concepts of cause and effect
• Social skills

We will reflect on the importance of offering challenge, depth and relevance of contexts, progression of thinking and engagement and of course enjoyment and choice through a partnership of play approach.

6. Messy manipulations for under 3’s

Reassess the learning potential of malleable materials for babies, toddlers and young children and how messy play experiences help develop the four internal senses and five external senses of our children.

Delegates will explore how the experiences they offer can help develop todays thinking and theory including Guy Claxton’s seven critical skills for children in the 21st century: confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity and craftsmanship.

Together we will explore the value of tinkering with materials and discover their capacity to promote language, early science and mathematical thinking as children design and create together using the manipulatives.

Theory and practice woven together through active hands-on practical ideas to promote critical thinking with our babies, toddlers and young children.

7. Spaces and places for play

Enabling environments are shared time, space, vision and engagement.  The toddler, the child their family and their ‘things’ should sit easily alongside the caring adults, other children, many resources to create a rich, stimulating and above all happy places to share.

Our environments should enable every toddler or young child to sense that they are important, that they belong and have something to contribute.

We will

• Explore early learning that involves opportunities to play, to interact, to explore, to create and to problem solve.
• Consider environments that are flexible and responsive, which can adapt to each little one’s immediate interests and needs
• Highlight relationships that encourage children to participate actively through sensitive, nurturing interactions.
• Investigate and identify ‘best practice’ environments to support our toddlers and young children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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