Week 10: Interview

During the week, I went and I talked to the local kindy to get an idea about the environment, the kids and the whole kindy thing as we had realised throughout development that we didn't have a CLUE about kindy anymore. It had been so very long since we had been that we needed to re-live and re-investigate it.

I went to Cubbyhouse Daycare in The Gap and they told us all about the new structure for Australian Kindys.

The Early Years Learning Framework .

This was a framework being introduced in all Australian kindergartens currently and should be the standard in the next couple of years.

The Early Year Learning Framework is about ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming’, and about learning through playing.

Belonging: is the basis for living a fulfilling life. Children feel they belong because of their relationships they have with their family, community, culture and place.

Being: is about living here and now. Childhood is a special time in life and children need to just ‘be’- time to play, try new things and have fun

Becoming: is about the learning and development that young children experience. Children start to form their sense of identity from an early age, which shapes the type of adult they will become.

Play is learning: When children play they are showing what they are trying to understand. This is why play is one of the foundations of the EYLF.

 


It's a framework that put's the kids more in control.  It lets them dictate if they have a nap (there is mandatory 'pause-rest' time though, in which they must be calm and quiet but they can draw if they want.

It's about bringing the home into the school environment. About water play, bringing the environment and nature indoors and about playing.

We were a little worried when there was no structure to the school day, that the kids decided what they wanted to do and when they do it (with gentle persuasion from the teachers so they don't do the same thing all day long). We wanted to record very set things, even the role call was an electronic system now so there was no need to have an office/classroom link.

We decided however, to use this to our advantage and to design in cooperation with the framework, to design to compliment it. We took the info in and used it to our advantage

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Pages/EarlyYearsLearningFramework.aspx

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/EYLFFamiliesGuide_A4_170909.pdf

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/EYLF_Ed_Guide.pdf

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Documents/Final%20EYLF%20Framework%20Report%20-%20WEB.pdf