broken brain

yesterday i endured 8 hours of training at the early childhood education conference. most of the sessions were good but just having to sit most of the day was hard. i don't sit still well. it makes my back and my shoulders and my neck hurt. i was impressed with all the goodies we got: a cooler bag with mostly useless advertisements for different companies making toys and equipment for kinders and creches, a couple useful pamphlets, a magnet (can never have too many fridge magnets even if it was for a superanuation fund),a pen, a plastic sand scoop (which if i don't take into work for the kids to use, it'll become a dog poop scoop), some bottled water, and best of all-- chocolate. i also made the point of walking past the australian super booth (the only booth there that had goodies to entice people to come talk to them. also the only booth that didn't have dozens of people constantly gathered around it) and picking up a free plastic water bottle (can never have enough of those for the bike), some more chocolates and another magnet (i didn't take another pen but i probably should have). when i told zac about all my goodies he just said i sounded like michael scott ('the office' for those who don't know).
i went to a good session on sustainability in early childhood ed. with tracy young (co-author of a few early childhood publications). i got a couple good ideas for next year out of that (we're on the right track right now with that but there's always room for improvement).
i think my favourite session (which also happened to fall in the worst time slot: 3:30-5 on a friday afternoon) was by kathy walker the author of the book "what's the hurry". i didn't realize until i got into the session that i've actually heard her speak before on this topic. it was still great though. she talks a lot about the whole thing of parents (and some preschool teachers) believing that children need to sit down and be learning things like numeracy and literacy as well as skills like how to line up so they will be ready for prep (year before grade 1). that's not true. there is starting to be a big movement of reintroducing play-based curriculums not only in preschools/kinders but also in early primary school (prep to year 2). that's what our centre focuses on. every once in a while we get parents asking what we're doing for literacy and numeracy (expecting that we'll be saying something like that we'll be learning a new letter every day or we sit down and do worksheets with counting on them or something). children learn through play. they don't need to do worksheets or develop fine motor skills by colouring in the lines of a colouring sheet or whatever. the activities they do help them learn literacy and numeracy as well as countless other life skills like being able to hold a conversation with peers or adults, problem solving..... the children who are interested in sitting and practicing printing do it through play (i.e. they make a book or draw a picture for a friend. if they want to write something they do have an alphabet sheet available as well as a list of how to spell everyone's names and they can ask us to write something for them to copy). no child is forced to come do a certain activity or do things a certain way. preschool/kinder isn't about preparing for prep. they will learn what to do in prep when they get to prep. its funny though how we have to explain the whole play based learning letting kids just be kids to parents. at the end of the session kathy gave us some really encouraging statistics about how play-based learning is doing.
i found a good article from the age that kind of sums up some of the things she talked about.
it was a good day but i'm exhausted. the conference is on again today but we only went for friday. i don't think i would have made it thru today. by the time we got home at 7pm (there was "happy hour" after the conference and then a 45 drive home-- not sure why it wasn't in a more central, inner city location instead of a racecourse in a random suburb) i was ready for bed. i layed on the couch and stared blankly at the tv for a couple hours. i must have been out as soon as my head hit the pillow because i don't remember zac coming to bed at all (and he said he came in 20 min after me). i never fall asleep that quickly.