Town of Beaumont ELCC - Seeds of Empathy...and then something beautiful happened

The centre includes an 'anti-bullying' programme called 'Seeds of Empathy'. A family in the community volunteers to bring in their young baby for the year once per week to share the care and tender moments with the children in the centre. The teachers are trained to teach it - sounds a bit like the way the 'Incredible Years' is organised although it is a very different programme. Centres can't 'just do the programme'. 

These are the themes of the programme:

 Here they are tracking the baby's growth

 Representing it here in a graph....stretching the programme to include mathematics learning and graphs

Then something beautiful happened....a young child was sitting on the knee of a teacher on the floor being comforted on his first day...he needed the undivided attention he was receiving to find some calm as he worked through how he was feeling. His sister heard him from the adjoined room and was looking over the low gate at him to check in. I commented to Mary Lynne 'I wonder if they will bring her in to help comfort her brother?' and Mary Lynne replied 'We'll have to wait and see'. Sure enough, we turned around and Jodie was walking over to the young child and teacher with the big sister. It was such a beautiful moment that it bought tears to my eyes! Talk about congruency - taking me through the 'Seeds of Empathy' programme and then we see this happening. I took photos of this moment and will only share them if the family give consent. It worked too!!

Encounters with some children - observing for schema

I was allowed to roam free in the nursery this afternoon observing the teaching and learning space and interacting with children if possible. As I have mentioned, the children are very used to visitors and initiate interactions freely. I was watching some children racing up and down a long hallway with wooden trucks 'transporting treasures' from one end of the hall to the other (hallway may be up to 20m long - I am spatially challenged - and the 3 children were racing up it pushing trucks). Not once were the children asked to stop this activity and it went on for over half an hour noise and all....no drama...no crashing. Others knew to get out of the way and respected the activities.

 I met a child while we watched others play games on the computers. There were some animals on the bench so we started to play with them. The next series of photos show the way the play was repeated many times over - lining up the animals 'connecting them in a row'. The teachers talk a lot about schema in their every day language with children. It is a 'default' framework for thinking for the teachers. There is a strange chaos in the environment inside that the children joyfully navigate around.

 Sorting them this way and then that...

 each time different arrangement - applying different criteria to line them up

 These photos are the same - I wanted a more artistic photograph :O)

 The toy at the end is her own toy from home - you can see it is a bit different from the other animals.

Each of these photographs is a different arrangement of the same animals. The child would set them up and then flick them over. The children are free to explore their schema in ways that are meaningful to them. I am impressed by this as it may be thought of that this full on space is not carefully orchestrated...don't be fooled....it is!!!