GEKA Bentleigh East

Looking through the lenses of children and the world they live in. 

GEKA Bentleigh East Educators

On Monday 14 October, we took the children on the bus to Packer Park, to enjoy the new park and in the hope that we would be able to see some frogs in their natural environment. Unfortunately, with the recent upgrade, the creek has been filled in with stones, and it was deemed too risky to explore, with children.

Our role as educators, is to listen to the children, engage with them, ask questions and speculate and wonder with them. We aim to foster children's curiosity through exploring, experimenting and discovering together.  We support and enhance enquiry-based learning. Often this takes place by simply focussing attention on the small things - and sharing the children's ideas and knowledge.

During the week we had been talking about the life cycles of the insects that some of the children had found in the garden, such as ladybugs and bees. We spoke about the importance of bees and decided, as per our philosophical approach to life-long learning, to extend the children’s curiosity by taking the children on the bus to Packer Park to see if there were any other bugs to be found!  The children explored the paths and clay constructions dedicated to frogs, which then took us on another learning journey about the life cycle of the Frog. Later, back at the kindergarten, the children were encouraged to draw what they saw and could remember about the habitat of a frog (attached is the children’s observations – which demonstrates the learning and understanding from the children’s perspectives).

It was so refreshing to stop and sit with young children and really listen in to and extend their conversations through their interpretations of their drawings.  It was absolutely delightful to be part of these special moments in time - seeing the world through their eyes!

“If we all could see the world through the eyes of children, we would see the magic in everything!”

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