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‘Art is a necessity of human life’

Posted byKathy Brodie on December 21, 2020.

“I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children”.

Oscar Wilde (first spoken on May 11, 1882 probably*)

Almost 140 years ago, Oscar Wilde understood that art and the appreciation of practical handicrafts was an essential part of children’s education.

Most Early Years settings value creativity and imagination in young children, encouraging practical activities.

However, there is a worrying trend that children should be ‘catching up’ on literacy and maths that they’ve missed, rather than the opportunities for the arts.

Maybe there should be an increase in access to dance, music, visual arts and handicrafts instead.

Or maybe we could consider another of Oscar Wilde’s wise insights, from the same lecture, that art is a ‘necessity of human life’.

*https://lnkd.in/djP3hbj

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From Early Years Summit to great practice in the setting

Posted byKathy Brodie on November 10, 2019.

In the weeks, months and sometimes years after an Early Years Summit, I meet enthusiastic people who say “after watching the Summit, we implemented….” or I’ll get emails with pictures showing the changes as discussed in the Summit and how the children have benefitted.

I love these interactions because there is always a judgement call with the Summit – what to include, the length of the presentations, how many, who and so much more – so it’s just fabulous to hear and see that we’ve pitched it just right, thereby having a direct impact on the children and everyday practice.

So I was just delighted to receive an uplifting email from Emma less than a week after the Summit had finished, explaining how she had already implemented some of her own learning from the Summit. Emma and the participants in this vignette have kindly given me permission to share it with you.

Thank you very much indeed for sharing your experiences, Emma!

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

(more…)

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Children and food

Posted byKathy Brodie on March 21, 2019.

The past few weeks seem to be dominated by food thoughts.

First of all, I had interviewed Deb Blakley, Australian Accredited Practising Dietitian, Nutritionist and mum – who created Kids Dig Food in 2012. We discussed food, children’s body image and the type of eating experiences that children have in our settings. It’s so important that we consider what food times are like for children because these early experiences will help to form children’s perspectives on food, eating and body image.

This really made me think about the different ways that we serve food – from rolling snack time to picnics outdoors to preparing food with the children. Are these chosen just for the convenience of the staff and the nursery/setting’s routines? Or do they change according to the cohort of children in the setting that day and time? How are children’s preferences met? How are the nutritional contents of a meal calculated?

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Valuing children’s abilities

Posted byKathy Brodie on June 24, 2016.

I was reminded last week just how clever, adaptive and creative children actually are.

Let me start at the beginning. In schools all over England, young children (and some VERY young children) are being given words to remember, spell and write. They are then tested on these and measured against a set of standards.

Now, in my experience, having a set of pre-determined scales poses a number of problems.

First of all, where do you pitch it? So low that everyone passes with flying colours – a little bit pointless, if great for self-esteem.

So high that most children will be set up to fail, which has to be morally, ethically and in terms of PSED wrong.

Therefore, it has to be a middling average, in terms of reading ability. There has not been any account made for children’s unique life experiences, their culture or their existing knowledge.

Even if we, as adults, have been there with the children, their experiences of the same event may be very different indeed. I’ll never forget the big trip to Chester Zoo, on the coach, great adventure, picnic lunch and the only memory my son has of the whole day is seeing the elephant weeing! So how can we possibly extrapolate their experiences and put them into a standard test?

On top of all that, children are exceptionally good problem-solvers, adapters and makers of meaning, even if something seems non-sensical to us.

For example, one of the measures, or tests, of their reading ability is to de-code ‘nonsense’ words. These are phonetically possible, but are not encountered as regular English words. The activity in this particular classroom last week was to identify the nonsense words, and then say them.

However, there is one little lad in the class who had early life experiences in Hong Kong, and also supports Everton football team. So when he came to the word ‘Chang’ he didn’t identify it as a nonsense word.

Why?

Because it is a common Chinese surname, a brand of beer common in Hong Kong and sponsors of Everton. So he has seen and used the word often and it makes perfect sense to him, in a number of different contexts.

As a test of identifying ‘nonsense’ words, this is clearly not working. As a test of de-coding the word, again, not working – he could read it on sight (at a hundred yards on a football shirt!). But as an example of his cultural, community and knowledge of the world – excellent!

But he got the test ‘wrong’ because he didn’t identify it as a nonsense word.

So before we try to show how we, as adults, are more intelligent than children, let’s just take a moment and remind ourselves how clever, inventive, creative and knowledgeable our children are first.