An Early Years Target?

I've just begun working with Eikefjord Nursery in Florø on a 3 year project as part of the Community Designed Education network. And, as usual, I asked for some background information before designing the training to ensure everything was tailored to their context. What came back was a wonderful insight into their nursery, courtesy of the headteacher, Susette Esp. Here are some of the edited highlights, as I'm sure colleagues in nurseries and primary schools in other countries would be fascinated to read them:

Eikefjord Barnehage has three classes for children from the age of 0 - 5, and is surrounded by beautiful nature all around that we frequently use in the education of our children. We have a beach right in front of us and the woods just a step out of our gate. The rooms are divided by age:

Piglet is for 0-3 year olds, with 9 places and 3/4 adults

Winnie the Pooh is for 20 children age 3-4 and 3/4 adults

The Hundred Acre Wood is our outdoor group for 12 five-year-olds and 2 adults

We have different aims and goals for our children in the different rooms to ensure new challenges and progress. One of the unofficial goals is for children to be able to climb onto the roof of our toy-shed. As long as they can make it up there independently then they can sit on the top, but they are not allowed to use cases or anything else to help them get there. This gives us information about their physical skills and strength, with most of the children able to achieve this by their last year in kindergarten.

We follow the national curriculum and strive to make sure we meet all the standards. The outdoor group do most of their activities in and through nature, though they have the use of a candle-lit hut for some of their activities. The other groups meet the needs of the children through a learning environment that is age specific. Our targets over the next 3 years are to grow our leadership capacity, use P4C to help children grow their language, thinking and collaboration skills, and to ensure that we make the most of the digital equipment that we have.

Primary Twitching

I heard a great suggestion from the owner of Alnmouth Grocers, Alan Tilmouth, recently: twitching for children (taking children out regularly to spot birds!) As he says, "Bird-watching should be compulsory in every primary syllabus. It is a great activity for kids; it improves listening, observation, memory, counting, colour recognition and gets them outdoors more."

Alan is of course biased. Not only is he a father of 3 young children, but he is the co-author of Birds in Northumbria and Editor of a regional weblog Bird North East. That said, he makes a good point! This, I'm guessing, would also be an activity of which, Reuven Feuerstein, recognised as one of the leading psychologists of his generation, would approve highly of.

Feuerstein's programme of intervention, Instrumental Enrichment, upon which so many of the world's curricula for children are based, theorises that the skills of thinking and learning are best developed by children when an adult encourages them to focus upon events, patterns, characteristics or notions that the child wouldn't otherwise notice. So when a young child is building a tower with Lego bricks, we might draw their attention to the colours of the blocks, or prompt them to create different patterns with the tower. Or when teaching a child to swim, we'd encourage them to notice their head position and not just to focus on their arm movements. This mediation is at the core of teaching and learning, and indeed helps to distinguish between outstanding and average practice. And so it would be with bird watching: focussing children's attention on birds' colours, size, flight patterns and so on.

So why not give it a try? The RSPB site gives a lot of ideas and resources. Or, if you're in Northumberland or the North East, I'm sure Alan would be only too happy to advise or support you. There's also a retired police officer turned twitcher, Per Eidsten in Tonsberg, Norway, who I know would be the perfect guide for a spot of twitching!

Out-Smart!

A wonderful innovation that's well worth exploring is Out-Smart. Developed by Paul Dearlove during his time at the award-winning N-RAIS project (Northumberland's Raising Aspirations in Society project), the approach combines outdoor adventure with thinking skills strategies.

Though many people will say that problem-solving activities in the outdoors are nothing new, Paul's approach is different: Out-Smart focuses as much on the reflective process and on making thinking visible as it does on the "initiative games".

Key questions that Paul asks Out-Smart learners include: what is an appreciative team; what learning dispositions do we want to grow; how can our response to challenge in the outdoors be applied to learning in the classroom; and can reflection be as active as adventure?

To find out more about Out-Smart, visit Paul's website or read Radical Encouragement by Williams and Wegerif. JN

Learning Outdoors

Learning Outdoors: come rain or shine, sleet or snow children between the age of 5 and 6 at a school in Norway spend all day learning outside. Can you imagine dinner nannies in the UK agreeing with that?!

The Headteacher of Torvmyrane School in Florø, Øivin Monsen explains why they do this: "The children have the use of a "grindhus" (traditional west coast hut) to leave their coats and packed lunches but otherwise they learn outdoors. The most obvious gain is in motor skills but they also know their letters and numbers and do philosophy for children regularly. They learn a lot about trees, insects, water, fish, birds, animals; they use knives, saws, hammers etc… " Every 5-year old is outside. And they insist that they no longer go to kindergarten. They are outdoor kids, and that is something completely different. After several years we have registered only positive feedback, e.g. that the children have much more to tell when they come home." JN