Blog

Creating a Purposeful Early Learning Environment

Creating interesting and purposeful early learning environments is something we all strive to do, but whose purpose are we talking about here? I imagine we’d all immediately jump in and claim it’s for the child, but in reality, there are often a number of other people that we end up considering.

Are they for us as practitioners? Whilst we’d all love to imagine that our environments are directed towards child lead learning, many of us operate within systems that mean we find ourselves often steering children round to a next step or learning goal that we need to prove they’ve met. Sometimes I’ve even desperately re-set children up so as to take a good evidence photo to go along with the observation I’m about to report in great detail. Who is that for? Did it help the child? Or did I interrupt their purposeful activity and are they about to ask that question… “can I go and play now?” Other considerations we have to make are our avai...

When we talk about outdoor learning, our minds turn to an escape from technology and the digital world.  Connecting with nature is refreshing, cleansing and vital, as is disconnecting from the world of screens, however, does this mean that technology does not have a place in outdoor learning? I argue that this is not the case and that there are many ways in which it can develop and enhance learning.

When we are exploring nature and observing the world around us, we are taking in so many things that we just cannot observe in our homes or settings. One of the most vital bits of kit in our outdoor adventures bag is a camera. Digital cameras (and phone cameras) have incredible resolution which enables children to capture a very accurate image of exactly what they have seen - this image becomes a freeze frame of a memory! Something that you can revisit and talk about within your setting - a way to bring nature in with you.  You can closely observe details of creatures and plants that pe...

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 more difficult - to chase down my dinne...

Join our Wanderlust Child Nature Study Programme here for £5 instead of £120

Hi, I’m Jenny from Little Robin Education. My background is a bit mixed, I have a biology PhD, and then became a secondary school biology teacher. I now stay at home with my two boys, aged 1 and 3, and run my creative business Little Robin Education from my front room! I specialise in nature education for young people, and make and sell nature flashcards designed to inspire a love of the outdoors in children.

I’m here on the Hygge in the Early Years blog to give you six simple outdoor activity ideas to do with preschoolers. Some of these activities require access to outdoor space, which I know isn’t easy for everyone at this time. I will suggest an inside version for each activity in case you’re isolating.

1. Egg box colour hunt

My three year old loves painting at the moment, but sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle to get him outside. I’m hoping it’s a phase! He did really enjoy this activity though, a...

Today on the blog we are joined by our wonderful guest blogger Jaime Bruce(Follow on Instagram here at https://www.instagram.com/jaybruce/. Jaime is an early years teacher from Australia who works in London. Her setting is play based, with a strong focus on sustained shared thinking, child-lead activities, and following individual interests.  Jaime 's guest blog today focuses on the joy of art. 

Walk inside the Early Years at my school, and the first thing you do is duck under the paintings and mobiles that hang from washing lines and “make-shift galleries” hanging everywhere. Head outside, and the chalk is in full use, the water colour paints are being liberally thrown at the prepared paper, and leaves and sticks are carefully lined up into patterns in the mud kitchen. The real joy of art in the Early Years, is that there is absolutely no definition of what really constitutes “art”. It permeates through every aspect of a child’s day: from a casual mark-make on the whiteboard of the...