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Reflective Practice and Reciprocal Learning – My Journey into ‘The Wingate Way’

For the past two years it has been my privilege to work at Wingate Nursery School in County Durham.  I came to this nursery because I felt that I understood this way of working, I knew (or so I thought) the meaning of ‘following children’s interests’ and I believed in trusting children to take reasonable risks.  However, it was only through working in Wingate’s quite extraordinary (and yet very simple) way that I truly began to understand the meaning and power of these things.

Let me cast my mind back to my earliest days at Wingate and tell you about just a few of the many things that impressed, surprised and downright shocked me! –

• We have only the loosest medium-term plans and no structured ‘teaching’ in phonics, numbers or anything else.
• The children use real tools and equipment (from hammers to step ladders). They are taught how...

Two years ago, I spent twelve weekends with other people who worked with young children, completing a certificate in Therapeutic Play. Amongst us there were teaching assistants, teachers, child psychologists, a woman who worked with newly fostered children, and pastoral care workers from all settings. The course ran alongside term time at school, which meant I was able to use a lot of what I learned on those weekends immediately with children on Mondays. Whilst I could harp on and on about all manner of things I picked up in that course, the one I kept and use regularly is WAIT; Why Am I Talking?

As adults, we find it odd when a space forms between us that isn’t filled with chat. That space can really feel unbearable to some, and can lead to over-thinking, gross discomfort, and even an unsettled doubt of ones own grasp of social skills. In reality, however, our more rational brain probably knows that a peaceful silence is often better than whatever light...

Story telling/ small world play and nature

As a setting we are always outside exploring the outdoors whether it be the beach, woods, National Trust places or simply our garden. We feel being outdoors is as important as introducing books and rhymes into the children’s every day life so why not combine the two. We do this regularly and will pack props and story books based on the themes and childrens interests into our daily bag and take them out with us.

 We find that by using props out and about grasps the children’s attention a lot more than sitting and listening on a rug. The children want to be involved, they want to take turns to hold the props - they will also use the props to retell and re enact the story later on in their play. Recently we visited a local National Trust place and explored the mud kitchen - we took Tiger who came to Tea story with us as it is a favourite and we felt that this would link in beautifully with the physical play around the mud...

By Jennifer Wooldridge

@mamasden

How has your week been? I hope you have managed to have a think about what your top resources are in your homes? Finding fun ways to engage the children at home is really important at the moment and I for one am finding that keeping things simple is really working.

With us all restricted on our movements during lockdown we need to make the most of our daily exercise, enjoy the world around us and focus on fun times with our families. We have just celebrated Earth day 2020 which seems even more poignant this year with the focus worldwide being on the current pandemic.

I touched upon our love of natural play last week in my blog all about my top 5 resources so I thought this week I would elaborate on some ways we use nature, and share ideas for natural crafts. DIY crafting has been extremely popular on my social media channels this week so here is the method behind what we have created.

To evoke a sense of joy we have tried to capture a little bit of...

Story telling/ small world play and nature

As a setting we are always outside exploring the outdoors whether it be the beach, woods, National Trust places or simply our garden. We feel being outdoors is as important as introducing books and rhymes into the children’s every day life so why not combine the two. We do this regularly and will pack props and story books based on the themes and childrens interests into our daily bag and take them out with us.

We find that by using props out and about grasps the children’s attention a lot more than sitting and listening on a rug. The children want to be involved, they want to take turns to hold the props - they will also use the props to retell and re enact the story later on in their play. Recently we visited a local National Trust place and explored the mud kitchen - we took Tiger who came to Tea story with us as it is a favourite and we felt that this would link in beautifully with the physical...

What happens next?

I was delighted to be part of a zoom conference on Sunday entitled ‘Which Way Now? Creating a Better Education System after Lockdown’. The panel consisted of speakers including EYFS, Primary, Secondary and Union Leaders; although they apologised for the lack of diversity within the panel and promised to be back with representatives from SEND and Post 16 amongst others. I listened with great interest to Elaine Bennett’s truly impassioned speech about the value and importance of the Early Years in education, and how we can use this horrendous experience to prompt big changes to our current system.

Elaine spoke at length about how the Early Years is at the forefront of education, but why? What is it we do so well? Well I think the Lockdown has highlighted a few key factors:

• We already value parents as playing a key role in children’s learning and have effective working partnerships with them. We understand that parents...

By Jennifer Wooldridge @mamasden

Today marks the start of our next 3 weeks of lockdown but i’m hoping that the next 3 weeks are going to be easier than the first 3 weeks now that we have adjusted to our new normal, adopting a new rhythm and discovered our new routine. I am somehow managing to find time to engage the children including my son by including lots of nature play and science. I’m focusing our activities by playing to their strengths and following their interests.

I think that the main thing I will take from all of this is that my children can lead their own learning if I listen to their play and conversations and then throw in a little bit of sit down learning in line with this. But we are largely spending our time playing and learning in the moment and I really want this period of time to be reflected on as a fun family period rather than a scary, uncertain time.

So instead of focusing on one particular topic this week I thought I would share with you my top...

Mud play is enjoyed daily over here at Sam Goldsworthy Childminding. It is either explored at our local forest school, at the woods or in our setting garden. We feel it helps to connect the children to nature where they are enjoying the calmness of being outdoors and also builds up their childhood memories as well as being great for their immune system being out in mud and dirt!

We have a mud kitchen that was purpose built between our trees in the garden.  We have added many items such as weighing scales, cake tins, bun cases, saucepans and spoons as well as a range of natural items including shells, stones with different vegetables painted on them, pine cones and sticks.

We have noticed that this type of outdoor play encourages lots of learning opportunities to the children. These include rich language opportunities learning new words such as sticks, pine cones, berries etc - the children are communicating, negotiating, problem solving and listening to each...

Curiosity is a fundamental human trait. It’s a basic element of cognition, yet the biological function and neurological underpinning to this day remain poorly understood by scientists.

It can be very simply described as a desire to know or learn something. It’s that intrinsic drive towards ‘interesting’ situations, something peculiar, to find out about the world. How does it work? What will it do? Why is it there?

 But why? What is it about humans that make them curious? In its purest, caveman style form, learning about the world around us enables us to survive (except for cats, apparently curiosity kills them). We learn basic skills such as how and what to eat or drink, how to move to hunt and hide, how to stay warm and safe. And beyond this, we then learn how to thrive.

Now the world is rather different nowadays, and requires a completely different and far more complex range of skills (although I’m not sure which I personally deem to be...

How do you resource opportunities for small world play? As an early years teacher I would ensure I had small world opportunities in every area of provision. For instance adding small world creatures and loose parts to my malleable area and observe how children make their own props for imaginative story telling. My maths area would also offer challenges around a small world problem in KS1 provision. ‘Like the pirates have found some coins and have to make a total of 20 for Captain Blackbeard by adding coins together.’

Here are some of my top ingredients for resources and organisation.

-Offer small world and block play together.
-Add collections of loose parts to encourage creativity and imaginative story telling. See right brained mom for ideas.
-Foliage- real and artificial
-Add a light element; projectors, light box, rope lights and fairy lights.
-Take small world outside and use natural settings
-Mirrors
-Mark making equipment available
-peg people
-Offer different backgrounds...