earlyed Archives - Early Learning Childhood Education

16/08/201817/08/2018

What’s your favourite childhood book?

Book Week is coming up from 18 – 24 August, bringing the perfect time to focus on the incredible benefits and positive impact of books and reading on people young and old.

A special childhood book can be a beacon of joy throughout your entire life. Think about your own early years and you can probably recall one or more books that have stuck with you ever since. To celebrate Book Week, why not get educators to share a favourite childhood book with children at your centre?

Three reasons we love reading

1. Literacy is vital

Learning to read and developing reading comprehension are essential skills for life. If you can encourage a love of reading and books in children, you are giving them one of the most valuable tools possible.

2. Reading benefits other areas, like numeracy

Researchers found that reading provides benefits to a child’s overall education, not just literacy. Even formal tests showed higher scores for children who were read to more often at age 4 and 5, including improvements in numeracy!

3. Books are full of knowledge

Reading books doesn’t just improve your ability to read — books are full of knowledge and facts that enable children to learn just about everything! In fact, for a child who isn’t overly interested in books, start with books on their favourite subject to spark their interest.

Three books with a positive message

If you need some extra inspiration for new books to try in your centre, here are just five that are not only a great read but also have a really positive message embedded within them:

The Way We Have Fun: This book isn’t just about a family holiday — it tells the story of a family who takes off on a family trip armed with devices like smartphones tablets and laptops. But only when these ‘essentials’ go missing do they realise where the real fun is!

The Rainbow Fish: A beautifully illustrated story that takes the reader on a journey to discover the true meaning of beauty and friendship.

Little People, Big Dreams: This series of books takes you through the stories of the lives of some of the world’s most amazing and inspiring people, such as Marie Curie or Mother Theresa. Educational and full of inspiration!

Make Book Week a time for your centre to focus on the importance of literacy and the magic of reading for children and adults alike!

We look forward to finding out more about your favourite books, so share them with us on our Facebook page.

05/04/201805/04/2018

Celebrate stories this World Book Day

A favourite childhood book can stay with you for a lifetime. Most of us have memories of a story that we couldn’t get enough of from when we were children, and World Book Day is all about celebrating stories and the love of reading.

World Book Day takes place each year on 23 April. Dedicated to promoting reading, it is the perfect chance for centres to create a theme around books and literacy in centres.

Literacy is an important part of early childhood education and World Book Day is another avenue for us to support children’s early literacy skills. Encouraging children to get reading, writing, listening and speaking while taking a play-based approach can help children in countless other ways.

Developmental benefits of early literacy

When early childhood education supports children in developing their early literacy skills, there are many other benefits for their development, such as:

Brain development
Emotional awareness
Self-expression
Empathy
Multi-sensory development
Reasoning ability
Vocabulary building
Improved speech
Enhances concentration
Improved memory
A foundation for future academic success

Providing a book-positive environment

There are many ways we can incorporate books, reading and story-telling into early childhood education more. Here are a few to inspire you:

Your own library or reading space

Depending on the space available, we believe all centres should at least have a reading space or corner. This should be set up for the optimal enjoyment of books! Comfortable seats or cushions and plenty of book options to choose from. A mini library could be wonderful if space allows.

Library excursions

A visit to the local library is a must for children. Not only are there thousands of books to browse and select from for free, there are also many fun activities run through community libraries that could work for small groups. Definitely worth investigating and planning a local library trip.

Book bags

Send a book bag home with a different child each day or week and ask children to bring in one of their favourite books to share. Children love the novelty and get to consider which story they want to have read to their peers in a different setting than usual. A simple cotton tote bag or environmental shopping bag will do the trick!

Let this World Book Day inspire you to consider the many benefits of reading in early childhood education!

Share your ideas with us on Facebook too!

04/02/201619/04/2016

Facebook With Families – Social Media in Early Childhood Settings

Whether it’s to save paper or try a more interactive approach, more and more childcare centres and kinders are using online communications to keep in touch with parents.

While many in the early childhood field hold strong opinions about the use of iPads and computers for young children, this post is more interested in the use of Facebook for centre educators and management to keep in touch with families.

Facebook With Families

Plenty of early childhood educational services have Facebook business pages to publicise their centre, almost like an extension of their website. Other centres also have private ‘closed groups’ on Facebook. In these groups, only parents and immediate family members are accepted into the group to view the information posted. This information can be anything from reminders of upcoming events, to photos of children and everything in between. Parents can post questions that can then be answered by other parents or the centre’s staff. Sometimes parents may even post photos from an external occasion like a child’s birthday party, for example, to share with other families and the staff.

These closed groups can become an extension of the partnership between centres and families, and also facilitate bonding and communication between parents, and between staff and parents.

Plan It Carefully

The key is for it to be well managed. A plan or strategy can be helpful for a few reasons: make sure that there is activity in the group on a regular basis, ensure comments and questions are monitored and moderated in a timely fashion that the rules are adhered to.

What sort of rules, you may wonder? We recommend requesting that parents don’t save the images from Facebook that have other people’s children in them, but that they can make a request to have the image sent to them via email. We also advise that a consent form be signed by parents to allow images of their children to go on the Facebook group. Although it is private and can only be viewed by approved members, some parents may not want their children’s image posted for various reasons.

Pros and Cons

We are in favour of the use of Facebook Groups for centre, but here a few pros and cons we have identified in relation to private Facebook Group for you to consider:

PROS
-Increase communication between the centre and families
-Facilitate bonding between families
-Attract parent interest and increase participation
-Simple way to stay in regular contact with all families

CONS
-Potential privacy and confidentiality issues
-Takes some extra time for the educator/s and/or management to post and monitor

Does your centre use online methods to contact parents and families? What other pros and cons do you see when it comes to the use of private Facebook closed groups for centres? Have you had a particularly positive or negative experience with Facebook Groups as a parent, educator or management?

Join the discussion with us on Facebook.