Our Staff Pedagogy in Whiteness Early Learning and Childcare (ELC)
The first few years of life are especially important for children to develop skills that will help and support them for their lifetime. Young children learn best through play, supported by sensitive and engaged adults. At Whiteness Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) children’s learning is fostered through developmentally appropriate child initiated, play based experiences. We aim to ensure we provide high quality learning through carefully planned outdoor and indoor experiences to link with the children’s interests.
Scotland has the ambition[1] to be the best place in the world to grow up. In the Early Years at Whiteness we aim to provide children with a welcoming, stimulating and homely environment which has a team of reflective practitioners who support and nurture each child as unique individuals. Through playing and talking together with our children we are able to build positive relationships to support each learner’s journey.
The Scottish National Strategy for Play[2] defines play as “freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated”. We strive to provide a wide variety of learning experiences with open-ended, natural and messy play resources which provide the opportunity for curiosity, inquiry and creativity. You may find that most of our craft activities might not have a recognisable ‘art’ product, this is because as a team we value the process of children’s learning, rather than the end product. The child may have a story to tell about their ‘work’. These experiences encourage the children to explore, investigate, wonder, think, problem solve, use their imagination, experience risky play and develop rich experiences in their emergent literacy, language, numeracy and mathematics skills.
We value that learning takes place everywhere, especially outwith the setting. We grow strong partnerships with our families and communities to support our children to make connections between their learning within the Early Years setting and their learning within their wider environment. Some of the ways this is implemented is by having strong links with our sharing of learning in the Learning Stories and through our Early Years blog. We aim to provide ongoing transition opportunities which support the children’s progression through the Early Level as we develop strong links with the P1 teacher.
If you are visiting or attending Whiteness Early Years please ensure you bring weather appropriate clothes as we take our learning outdoors daily, whatever the weather!
This is great Ritchie! I used your teams ambition to discuss the development of ours. We were inspired by your enthusiasm through this which is clearly evident in the above statement. Play at the heart of all you do shines through and is such a driving force behind early years. To have an appropriate understanding of play, as the team obviously do, reflects child centred and high quality interactions.
Senior Early Learning Practitioner – Dundee
What a great Ambition Statement, Whiteness. Brilliant to see how you’re supporting children’s play and imagination whilst developing their foundational skills to enable children to succeed.
Look forward to continuing my work with practitioners in Whiteness as part of the Northern Alliance Raising Attainment in Literacy, Language and Communication workstream.