Engaging the hearts, hands and heads of our youngest learners

Naomi Wright

Our Early Learning Centre provides a rich, meaningful and holistic learning environment, engaging the hearts, hands and heads of our youngest learners. As we create a secure and stimulating play-based learning environment, we expand our students’ thinking and enhance their desire to know and to learn, promoting positive dispositions towards learning.

Children act intentionally and with agency in play. With opportunities of uninterrupted time to play, children find inspiration, joy, and gain a sense of wellbeing. Their immersion in their play enables them to enjoy being in the moment, to wonder, to discover truth and seek understanding, to find the courage to take risks and to try something new.

Through play, children develop a sense of self, in turn creating a sense of belonging. Each day, our students make decisions, take risks, experiment, and explore with what and with whom to engage. Neural pathways and connections in the brain are stimulated when children are fully engaged in their play as they make plans, create characters, solve problems, develop self-awareness and learn how to socialise and negotiate with others. A sense of community is formed very quickly within our space as relationships are developed.

Our staff continually model the value of service, putting others first as we respond to children’s evolving ideas and interests. Staff assess, anticipate and extend the children’s learning via open-ended questioning, providing feedback, challenging their thinking and guiding their learning. We are attuned, and actively listen, to children so we can respond in ways that build relationships and support children’s knowledge, development and wellbeing.

Learning environments include physical, temporal, social and intellectual elements. Welcoming, safe and inclusive indoor and outdoor learning environments reflect, respect, affirm the identities, and enrich the lives of children and families. Our engagement with the outdoors empowers children to connect with nature facilitating their social, spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional learning.

The land on which we teach and learn is an integral part of our program. We express our gratitude for our learning space with a daily Welcome to Country song, acknowledging those who have learnt and walked on the land before us. This connection allows our young learners to seek and develop their own special place in our school and wider community.

We believe that magic happens here at the ELC, as all of these elements harmoniously come together and there is a hum of play and engaged learners.