What I know about early childhood
When I think of early childhood I think of babies, toddlers, education, culture, social norms. Those are the few key words that I would use to describe early childhood. I would also describe it as being the foundation that everything a child learns is placed upon.
Loris Malaguzzi was someone who stood out to me, his work with children and the Reggio approach inspired me. it took teaching and put children at the fore front of it and explored the different ways a child could contribute to their own learning, and it looked at how we as practitioners can work with the children to get them to engage with the work. Loris Malaguzzi took his experience from working with children and applied theory to better his work which contributed to his work on Reggio approach.
Both Malaguzzi and many other are talked about and are used in the studies of early childhood, and I know that I will be drawing on many other theorists like Malaguzzi within my work.
In addition, Tina Bruce believed that play is an active process rather than something that reaches a goal or produces a product. That providing toy is not necessary because children have a way of coming up with their own props using simple materials such as sticks and pebbles.
Furthermore, my experience as a play worker and the additional work placement within nursery and day cares. I have seen different structures and the benefit of how non-structured and free flowing play affect the child well-being and learning for: example I work as a play worker at the south London gallery on one of the projects that have been going on for a few years it is local and caters to the estates that are around the gallery.
The work is based around how play and art work close together so we get many artists who come and do play activities that produce art. However, that doesn’t mean we use paint and brushes, we encourage children to use the thing that they find around them for play, like old wheels and chair and turning it into whatever they imagine, with only wood, nails, and hammers.
We give them free choice on what they choose to do with the material provided. Also, play worker we also try and encourage the children to use saws and drill safely, we do this so that if the child ever came across any of these tools they would be able to use them properly and safely so they may avoid injury.
After hearing and working with children in different types of environment I realized that this course would be the best for me. As I know that I will gain a lot from this course which will allow me to link theories to my experience within my work place, and allow me to think outside of the box and practice approaches such as the Reggio approach.