Wyong Little Learners Educational Program

 

Children learn most effectively through a child-centred approach which is based around their ideas and interests and has a strong family focus.

Teaming together a rich variety of skills, interests, training and experience Wyong Little Learners Child Care Centre staff are committed to the provision of a program which supports challenges and extends children as they strive to make meaning of their world.

We aim to:

- Utilise our centre Philosophy and goals as a basis for planning programs, setting up environments and for how we interact with children throughout our implementation of the curriculum.

- Create and sustain a learning environment in which children are challenged to be puzzled, to explore, to create and to be provoked to see the familiar in a different way.

- Acknowledge and extend children’s communicative, creative and intellectual competencies through the provision of genuine learning experiences with personal meaning for children.

- Acknowledge the importance of play for children as a way of finding meaning and developing an understanding of their world.

- Use observation, as a powerful tool for developing a meaningful curriculum centred on the children’s own needs, interests and ideas.

- Encourage positive interaction, negotiation, and co-operation between children through small and large group collaborative projects based around the interests and ideas of the children involved.

- Acknowledge the need to belong, to be involved and to have a sense of ownership within the learning environment.

- Collaborate with families in a shared approach to children’s education and care, viewing the importance of parents, and extended family members as both recipients and contributors of information.

- Honor children’s work and their construction of knowledge through the use of ongoing documentation and display which children can share with each other and their families.

- Build on children’s interests, to make different types of learning and activities meaningful for children – a planning approach that is ‘integrated’, allows children to take part in activities that focus on all of the different developmental areas, which are generally outside of their normal play choices, only because these are planned around something (interests) they want to be involved in. Interest based learning assists children in becoming confident and successful learners.

Implementation

· Note: applies equally to both the indoor and outdoor environment and programs as both are equally important.

· Communicating with, and listening to children to find out how they see the world is a good first step to encourage curiosity in learning and to get them used to asking questions about what they are exploring

· Recording children’s communication is an essential as part of your observations, and for further planning

· The set up of the environment should encourage children to settle into activities and extend their play, and the use of permanent learning areas in a defined space and with baskets of other resources freely available for children to choose from to give them options to extend what they are doing.

· Daily recording formats such as a daily diary or program allow you to focus in on learning that occurs throughout the day and use this as a basis for further planning both immediately and in the following days.

· The daily format provided utilises the permanent learning areas within the environment as the set play areas where children’s learning is extended and through discussion with children and utilising group times in addition to this, children can extend their interests within these set areas. The format allows for planned activities to be written into the set permanent learning areas on a daily basis or weeks ahead if needed, but provides a daily evaluation section that incorporates observations of what the children did in that area, along with the interpretation and evaluation for that area and experiences within it.

· These observations/evaluations can be then transferred into the children’s individual developmental portfolios to show the child’s developmental progress over time.

· Group times are flexible and can be used for large or small group activities depending on what the children are currently learning about

· A developmental style report issued half yearly and at the end of the year provides families with additional insight into their child’s learning and development at the centre and follow-up carer and family meetings can be arranged to further discuss their child as needed throughout the year.