Captivating Learning: Making the ordinary extraordinary – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

When educators connect with children’s curiosity, they can make the everyday an extraordinary and joyful occasion for deep learning. Joy comes from the aha moments, and the successes felt when achieving things.  It also comes from the desire to know more and do more when the child joins in experiences that are meaningful for them.  Understanding the motivations that underpin your children’s play, learning, and development is key to designing learning environments and experiences that captivate and enthral young children.

Develop your professional knowledge and practice so that you can:

• Confidently interact with children, engaging in sustained shared thinking
• Create authentic learning experiences, by slowing down and looking for wonder
• Identify and work with children’s ideas with ‘intelligent materials and tools’ such as light, found objects, and simple technologies

Making the ordinary extraordinary enables learning that is rich in children’s agency, that fosters a sense of belonging, nurtures habits of mind, and gives time to immersing in the joy of learning together.

Curriculum design and curriculum-making with children – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Curriculum is lived out by children through the daily life of the setting through interactions with the environment, with practitioners and each other, as well as being a top-level plan of what settings want for their children to learn.  As young children’s learning is often driven by their play and interests, curriculum design needs to be flexible and dynamic, with a balance of what is intentionally planned to bring new ideas and experiences to the children. Curriculum-making with children takes account of children’s learning in how they see themselves as learners, their interests, funds of knowledge, their working theories, and how they learn as described in the characteristics of effective learning.

Develop your professional knowledge and practice so that you can:

• Evaluate, articulate and reason out your curriculum intent for all children based on how they learn, their needs, and rights
• Take your children’s interests seriously and use them to inform your curriculum by valuing and responding to their funds of knowledge and working theories
• Use your professional knowledge of your children and community to build a curriculum that holds meaning and relevance for children through being attuned, responsive, and inclusive

Curriculum is a dynamic process and through valuing play, relationships, and shared enquiry you can create a bespoke curriculum in line with the EYFS Framework that is pertinent, connected, and with purpose for your children.

Learning outdoors with nature: developing children’s ecological awareness and identity – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

When children learn with nature they generate many connections, associations, ideas, imagination, stories, and working theories of how the world works and their relationship with it. Educators can support babies, toddlers, and young children to attune to the rhythms, cycles, evolutions, patterns, sounds, and movements and help children to develop their ecological awareness and identity (which is how they understand the importance of nature to themselves and others).

Develop your professional knowledge and practice so that you can:

• Develop ways to learn with the nature evident within your setting (under the children’s feet and above them in the sky) even in an inner-city urban context
• Explore approaches to attune, map, journey, story, place-make, seek, collect, name and make special, all contributing to the development of children’s ecological awareness and identity
• Learn how to use the expressive arts and design and technology to build meaningful learning through children’s engagement with insects, plants, stones, soil, leaves, snails, trees etc

Developing an ecological awareness and identity develops transformative and creative learning which enables children (and their families and educators) to consider the impact of their actions on the world in learning, growing, and living together.

STEAM approaches in the early years: putting the ‘A’ into STEM – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Developing the art of mathematical thinking – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Debi Keyte-Hartland delves into the world of mathematical thinking looking at the aesthetic and artfulness of maths as well as examining and exploring how opportunities for mathematical thinking can be found in our built and natural environments of our settings.  Patterns, symmetry, geometry surround us everywhere, as do concepts such as infinity, fractals, the golden ratio, and Fibonacci sequences.  Often it is a case of knowing for ourselves, building our own knowledge of subject to then know how to look for and appreciate the mathematics that surrounds us, so that we can delight in the joy of mathematical thinking, of the multiple strategies in which to test, investigate and solve mathematical problems as well as developing the skills to communicate and express reasoning, which is a fundamental requirement in mathematics.

We can also increase our understanding by looking at how maths is not simply a set of abstracted ideas that is taught and learnt by the child but are inherently concrete and embodied which aids understanding.  We will also explore the effect and impact of mathematical ‘provocations’ to assess their quality in developing mathematical thinking and to examine the role of the adult who actively supports their language, conversation and linguistics of their mathematical thinking and reasoning.

Essential Questions;

• How can children see and play with mathematical ideas in the environment?
• How can children experiment with materials to explore mathematical concepts?
• How can you help children to reason out their thinking in expressive and communicative ways?

Sustained Shared Thinking: thinking and talking together with children – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Block Play and Loose Parts in young children’s learning from birth to five – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Since the early 1800s block play has played an important role in young children’s holistic learning and development. This course will guide participants through the theory of block play referencing Froebel’s Gifts and Pratt’s Unit Blocks (2014) to explore what is special about block play and how it can support children’s learning and development across multiple domains. These areas include their mathematical skills and thinking, their language and communication, their creative learning, their social and emotional development, their physical skills as well as across other cognitive areas of learning such as abstract, logical, and symbolic thinking skills.

Within this course, Debi will explore the stages of block play, what to observe and look out for, and how to support and interact with children as they play and encounter blocks.  She will also explore how to curate contexts with blocks, how to combine blocks with other materials (and other blocks), and how to offer them to babies, toddlers, and young children. 

Loose Parts can complement a block play area and is equally holistic in its capacity for learning and development across a wide range of areas. Loose parts are also materials that can be offered to children in other spaces, inside and outside, and on both a small and large scale.  The theory of loose parts (Nicholson,1971) will be referenced as a way of developing children’s creative thinking and an exploration of ‘possibility thinking’ to consider how young children move from the ‘what is’, to the ‘what if’ (Craft, 2014).

During this highly engaging day there will be opportunity for thinking and discussion, action planning, and practical engagement with materials to enable all participants to develop their pedagogy and practice in relation to the age groups they are working with.

Creative thinking through the visual expressive arts and design – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

This course highlights how creativity and critical thinking are essential characteristics of learning across all areas of learning in the EYFS.  You will examine specifically how to support your young children as they move from exploration and investigation of materials/resources to a point of thinking and expressing creatively and critically with them.   You will come to know how to observe and support their progression in learning through the visual expressive arts and design, and how to enrich their skills and reasoning, their imagination and possibility thinking in exploration and investigations of ideas in mediums such as different kinds of paint, drawing media, sculptural materials, wire, found objects and loose parts including the use and combination of technology and digital media in creative and communicative ways.

You will leave feeling confident to construct playful situations of creative and expressive learning that considers the interplay of using open-ended and ‘intelligent materials’ as well as thinking about the choices we can make in presenting and curating materials and tools that widen the possibilities for your children’s expression and communication of their ideas, feelings, thoughts and theories of the world. 

Essential Questions;

• How can you recognise, support and build on young children’s creativity and critical thinking through the visual arts with your children?
• What are the playful learning contexts that you can design in your settings using creative enquiry and the considered curation of materials and resources?
• How can you use ‘intelligent materials’ to develop your children’s ability for creative possibility thinking and their expression of ideas, thoughts, emotions and experiences?
• How can the arts and creativity help your children to construct knowledge and understanding whilst developing their language, communication, and vocabulary?

Making marks, drawing, and writing: Signs, codes, and symbols – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

This course explores how children’s mark-making (or graphicacy) is a form of communication and expression that deserves and requires the attention of knowledgeable educators.  Young children naturally make marks and develop drawing in joyful ways, with the processes and products revealing their ideas, feelings, thinking, stories, and experiences.  Through engaging in the drawing and mark making process, you get to know your children, noticing their interests and passions, their development and learning.  When children draw and make marks, they are also communicating their understanding of the world which surrounds them, developing and sharing their mathematical thinking and beginning the journey into signs, codes, symbols that become writing. 

During this course we will unpick how children:

• develop their skills of graphicacy within a context of meaning-making and multimodal communication
• how they communicate their ideas and thinking through graphicacy (including their mathematical thinking and engagement in multimodal communications and culture)
• develop skills and mastery with visual forms, including signs, codes, symbols and writing

And how as attentive and responsive educators, you can:

• explore the engaging and practical contexts and materials that support your children’s rich mark making, drawing, and writing
• learn how to be better by your children’s side in playful contexts that amplify possibilities for your children’s deep thinking and communication

Children, technology, and the digital world – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

It is essential that young children use technology, digital media, and tools in creative and expressive ways, which enables them to see themselves as creators of content and not just as passive consumers of digital media.  Technology and digital media can encompass many areas of learning and development as well as demonstrating characteristics of effective learning.  Using rich examples and case studies from practice, the confidence of educators in using technology and digital media, together with familiar tools and materials of early years settings will be increased.  Find out how to explore your children’s questions, curiosities and interests and thinking about the world in which they exist and come to know using data projectors, web cams, digital microscopes, film, photography and animation, image manipulation, as well as older technologies such as overhead projectors, led lamps and torches.  It is through the blending of more traditional materials together with digital resources and tools that children can learn, construct, create, and express.  

Essential Questions;

• What is the difference between consuming and creating with technology and digital devices and why is it important?
• How has children’s play evolved in the digital world?
• How can you enrich children’s learning using digital media and technology?
• How can we enable creativity and expression of children’s own ideas to co-create content rather than simply consuming the content of others?

Observing and documenting learning – delivered by Debi Keyte-Hartland

Observation is an essential part of daily early practice and getting it right is important for assessment and planning and for sharing children’s learning and development with the children themselves, their families and others interested in finding out about how you know your children and what they are developing understanding about.  Observing and documenting is about tuning into how your children learn and what they are making sense of.  It is a process of making learning visible that begins with your values and beliefs of children, of childhood and education. You cannot observe that which you don’t see or understand, so observation and documentation is also a process of reflecting on and in practice as well as being a rich source of ongoing professional development that helps you to learn about how children learn. 

This course draws upon international research and case studies of practice that enables you to explore and practice a way of observing, reflecting, and documenting young children’s learning that enables you to share your knowledge of your children and how they learn in your context.

Essential Questions;

• Getting the balance right: What is effective and purposeful observation and documentation in the EYFS?
• Looking for learning: How can photography or film be used sensitively and effectively to capture and communicate learning, for children, for families and others?
• Developing Daily Practice: How can you use observation and documentation as part of a reflective cycle of assessment and meaningful planning?
• Continuing professional development: How can processes of observation and documentation be used for professional learning of individuals and teams?