Innehållsförteckning för END OF YEAR DECEMBER ISSUE 2022 KINDNESS från Pedagogy+

It’s been quite the year – let’s just say emotionally, physically and energetically draining! I think I felt that towards the end of 2021, and certainly 2020! What I’m beginning to realise is that every year is a BIG one, so how do we create rituals and practices that support and scaffold us throughout the year; that keep us bolstered, even in the roughest and toughest of moments? GRATITUDE One of the most powerful practices we can cultivate is Gratitude. A daily gratitude practice goes a long way to keeping things in perspective and to keeping us feeling healthy and strong. The latest scientific research tells us that gratitude can be very good for your health. In fact, expressing gratitude has beneficial effects not just on your mood but also…

Thomas Street Playspace Winner: Parks & Leisure Australia 2022 Excellence Award for Play Spaces >$0.5m. Winner: LGPro Award for Excellence to Bayside Council: ‘Diversity and Inclusion Award’ for the Thomas Street Playground Community Engagement. It was a beautiful site. A large open space, with an informal oval in the middle and surrounded by established native trees, predominantly gums, but with others besides. Almost unencumbered, it had at the very front a fort built by the community thirty years before. It was well loved and well used still but had significant maintenance issues, having outlived its expected life of just over half the time it had already existed. We were a team of small operators. mostly sole operators, but a couple with an employee or two, which ensures direct personal contact…

Hogmanay, the celebration of the New Year for Scots at home and abroad — this year, I have the absolute pleasure of spending Hogmanay with friend and colleague Claire Warden and her family. Claire’s home is a rambling lodge on the edge of the Abercarney estate in Perthshire, the same estate that is home to Claire’s Auchlone Nature Kindergarten. The lodge is an array of Christmas decorations. Baubles and treasures hang from the branches of Christmas trees – but there is still a tree to come – it is a family tradition that THE tree, a fresh fir tree, waits until everyone is home to share in the delight of dressing its branches. This tree graces the formal lounge; it will sit floor to ceiling and might need some trimming,…

ABC Kids Early Education wish Pedagogy+ readers a happy, safe and relaxing festive season. We look forward to seeing you at ‘Inspire’ in March 2023. No spoilers but … our stunning display, created in collaboration with Play School and Semann and Slattery, will be a real showstopper! Be sure to pop by, say hello and immerse yourself in the magic of Play School. Whether you’re an ABC colleague, a content collaborator, an early childhood professional, or represent a peak early childhood organisation, we’re delighted to have you in our network and look forward to things ahead in 2023. And what a brilliant year it’s been: • We kicked things off with the Early Childhood Australia Learning Hub ‘Exploring science content knowledge with ABC Kids listen podcast: Imagine This’. • Play…

‘When you do more kindness, you make more friendships… and then it might go to the next person’– Gray, age 4 A teacher recently told us a story of kindness that emerged from her practice. It was early in the school year, and a naptime ritual was just beginning to take hold. Two children lay in a corner with a lamp hanging over them. One asked that the light be turned off – and the other, terrified, said no way. From across the room, the teacher explained that she would be over as soon as she was done rubbing a fellow student’s back. When the teacher made her way across the room, the child again asked that the light be turned off – and his classmate said it should be…

As the end of the year approaches, there is just one more festival to celebrate in the Jewish calendar before the children leave us for the holidays. It’s Chanukah! Also known as the Festival of Lights, Chanukah is a joyous festival where children receive gifts, spin dreidels (spinning tops), eat doughnuts and light the Chanukiah (candelabra) for eight nights, adding one more candle each night until the Chanukiah is gleaming with light. It’s a time for families to come together to feast on oily foods, the oilier, the better! At the Kornmehl Pre-school, our year is filled with many wonderful Jewish festivals, and our Jewish curriculum is a big part of our learning. We strive to make each festival exciting and meaningful for the children. We want them to develop…

AND THE GRINCH WITH HIS GRINCH-FEET ICE COLD IN THE SNOW STOOD PUZZLING AND PUZZLING HOW COULD IT BE SO? IT CAME WITHOUT RIBBONS. IT CAME WITHOUT TAGS IT CAME WITHOUT PACKAGES, BOXES OR BAGS AND HE PUZZLED AND PUZZLED TILL HIS PUZZLER WAS SORE THEN THE GRINCH THOUGHT OF SOMETHING HE HADN’T BEFORE WHAT IF CHRISTMAS, HE THOUGHT, DOESN’T COME FROM THE STORE? WHAT IF CHRISTMAS, PERHAPS, MEANS A LITTLE BIT MORE DR SEUSS HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS 1957…

Playful inquiry: Rooting in uncertainty – Matt Karlsen (USA) We are living in an epoch riddled with crises. That simple statement ought to have profound implications for our work, provoking new questions regarding how we want to be with children and with each other. As we step into this auspicious gathering, let’s think together about how playful inquiry might support us and the communities we serve. What do we want from schools today? How can we support the communities we work with to recognize the tremendous resource of children’s perspectives? What if the greatest opportunity is to engage with reality - in all of its complexity and uncertainty - by asking what if together? Sharing stories, seeking connections: A practice of playful inquiry – Susan Harris McKay (USA) We are…

FANTASY • REALITY • OPPORTUNITY 23-25 MARCH 2023 SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE Inspire 2023 invites delegates into a world of fantasy, opportunity and reality. It proposes that to work in the early years of education, we must foster our ability to fantasise about possibilities and release ourselves from practice and mindsets that can trap us from moving forward. Inspire 2023 straddles our ability to dream big whilst ensuring we continue to deliver exceptional outcomes. We will ask questions such as: • What might our sector look like if we dared to dream? • What might children’s education look like if we could release ourselves from the mundane and collapse into the world of delight? Inspire 2023: Fantasy, Opportunity, Reality is your opportunity to experience a conference beyond your expectations. WHAT…

Semann & Slattery Personal Shopper: Troy Bettesworth…

Composer: Ludvig van Beethoven (1770-1827) The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, Choral Composed between 1822 and 1824. Ode to Joy premiered in Vienna in May 1824. On stage, a huge ensemble gathered – three soloists to anchor the choir, two dozen violins, two dozen wind instruments, a dozen cellos and basses, ten violas, and a heap of percussion. And centre stage, facing the orchestra, the composer/conductor Ludwig van Beethoven who, by this time in his life, was completely deaf! Tension in the theatre was palpable. The audience took their seats and waited, was this going to be a moment of sheer madness…with his back to a full house, Beethoven raised his arms, and the performance began…His first symphony in ten years and the first-ever symphony where a…

As we head towards the end of yet another year and become engrossed in end-of-year festivities, it is natural that we find ourselves reflecting on the past. The recent past – what 2022 held for us and a more distant past – the memories, the legacies and the traditions we hold dear. I was born in India. Our end-of-year celebration is called Deepavali or Diwali. It is one of India’s most auspicious religious celebrations. Globally Deepawali is referred to as the Festival of Lights. Note – we have used both titles interchangeably throughout this article. Observed by over a billion people across India and millions of people worldwide, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains embrace the festival. Diwali myths vary across the cultural spectrum. For some, Diwali coincides with harvest and…

On the first day of Christmas, my teacher made for me a Christmas handprint nonsensicalivity – nonsensical activities which occur within the context of our pedagogical practice and beliefs. It concerns me how deeply engrained this practice is within the sector, and I cringe at the many posts on social media by educators sharing their ‘creative ideas’. There appears to be an invisible vortex that sucks educators into feeling compelled to mass-produce creative products with children replicating the commercialised marketed perspective of Christmas. This perspective is prevalent in many community spaces and creates a discourse for a singular, superficial perception of Christmas. We don’t need to transform our services into a wonderland filled with a stereotypical representation of Christmas. We can and should do better than that, and at Salamander…