As a practitioner in the Early Years sector you know a lot about play and spend your time at work observing children at play. You notice when they are absorbed in the action of digging in the flower beds or leading cars around the floor. You listen intently as they tell you about their adventures into the woods or about the latest episode of the infamous family of pigs. You engage in their water play and add props to their construction. You skillfully support the  process of learning and deftly write observations to evidence the presence of the characteristics of effective learning.

  My question to you though is, when do you play? When Trivial Pursuit comes out with the family do you sit back and prefer to watch the action, or are you so engaged in the game you don’t notice you’ve been there for 3 hours, or are you the one who bends the rules to make sure you win? It’s OK, it’s just a game, isn’t it? What about when you go out for a walk in the countryside – do you get your head down and count the miles, race to the ‘top’ and savour the view, or are you the one at the back, stopping, examining, smelling the flowers. You might be appointed as the photographer to capture the walk for posterity or the selfie queen, snapping images of yourself at every stopping point. The point is, we all absorb the world around us differently and if we pause and notice how we do this it can have an impact on the way we notice it in others, especially children. Children play to learn, we need to learn to play. Book me for a training session on the Characteristics of Effective Learning and you get to play and through play, you’ll develop your learning of how children learn.