Glen Education St Patrick's
Building a New Learning Community
Carol Vassiliou, Early Childhood Teacher
Helen Haslem, Early Childhood Educator
As educators, we believe in creating an environment that encourages learning, curiosity and a sense of belonging. We strive to make children feel comfortable and excited about being in the learning environment both indoors and outdoors. Being a brand-new purpose-built facility, as a team we are getting to know the environment ourselves and are planning for many educational experiences. This environment has been specifically facilitated and considered in ways that are intentional and purposeful for the children with a host of natural light, order and aesthetically capturing to the children, making it a very exciting experience for the educators and children.
Our emergent curriculum is based on the interests and ideas of learning from the children working cohesively and in collaboration with the educators as researchers and intentionally engaging children in the experiences and interaction about the learning that is occurring.
The educators facilitate the environment (as the third teacher) and provide experiences which will develop further these interest and ideas.
Within the indoor environment, we use a variety of methods to inspire learning and similarly with the outdoor environment we use the natural environment to encourage exploration and learning. Our outdoor learning space allows children to explore the natural world and use outdoor activities to help them develop their physical, cognitive and social skills. We use the outdoors to explore topics such as science, math and language for example, the children can use the outdoors to observe the changes in the environment, practice counting and sorting with natural objects or simply create stories about the plants and animals/minibeasts they encounter. These experiences help to bring the space to life and provide a more meaningful learning experience.
Overall, the outdoor area invites curiosity and fosters a sense of belonging which is an important part of our kindergarten educational experience. By taking advantage of the environment, we are able to provide children with unique and engaging learning opportunities that will help them develop into confident and curious learners within this space. The indoor and outdoor environment are both interchangeable for learning opportunities. We use outdoor material props incorporated with activities indoors for instance pine cones with the use of dramatic areas or with playdough. We will also encourage families to collect and contribute to our equipment by collecting these natural resources. This encourages the notion of reusing, recycling, rethinking and repurposing of resources and as a community we encourage sustainable practices together.
We make sure, the spaces are organised and adapted to support every child’s participation and that the resources, materials and equipment allow multiple uses, are sufficient in number, enable every child to engage in play-based learning. The environment to be set up to promote sustainability encourages the notion of children as partners and collaborators in their responsibility for the environment “and their inherent responsibilities as global citizens’’ (ACECQA, Quality Area 3).
We support andd encourage the children to engage in the learning opportunities available to them in both environments. We believe that by creating an environment that inspires learning, curiosity and a sense of belonging, the children will be able to reach their full potential and as defined by Malaguzzi ‘the environment as the third teacher’, a flexible environment, responsive to the need for educators and children.