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Creating ‘enabling’ environments
Setting the scene
The EYLF (p. 14) emphasises the
importance of:
… creating physical and social learning
environments that have a positive impact
on children’s learning.
As Catharine commented on the EYLF
Forum:
I think the EYLF is challenging us to look
seriously at the environment we create
for children and ensure that the spaces
‘spark conversation and interaction and
exploration and belonging, being and
becoming’.
The physical environment is one of the
seven quality areas of the forthcoming
National Quality Standard (NQS) which
services will be required to meet to obtain
approval to operate from January, 2012.
The NQS (Draft NQS, 2009, p. 16) requires
that:
The environment is inclusive, promotes
competence, independent exploration
and learning through play.
E-Newsletter No. 11 focused on the ‘great
Australian outdoors’ where children can
be free to connect with nature, build
relationships and challenge themselves to
do today what they couldn’t do yesterday.
As Jodie beautifully expressed on the EYLF
Forum:
Outside, where we can feel the wind in
our faces, feel the ground crunch under
our feet, see the colours of the earth, see
the lizards play, smell the grass mowed
and watch the plane leave trails, or clouds
move across the sky.
EYLFPLP e-Newsletter No. 13 2011
E-Newsletter No. 12 discussed the
‘language’ of indoor environments where
visible boundaries create a sense of
‘rooms’ within a room and materials and
equipment are organised so that children
can make choices and show a sense of care.
This e-Newsletter aims to bring some of
those principles together and to talk about
how learning is best fostered by the spaces
we create for and with children.
A safe harbour
The spaces we create communicate
emotional as well as physical messages to
children, families and staff.
All children need a ‘safe harbour’ where
they feel secure, nurtured, believed in and
supported to ‘be brave’ and try new things.
Children benefit from having familiar
spaces and equipment, from being allowed
to use their comforters as they need them
and from being given time to return to
unfinished work until they are satisfied.
As the manager of a setting in Victoria said:
If a child needs the soothing effect of
pouring water, we let them pour from
one container to another for ages—don’t
interrupt; allow the child to be in that
moment. If they need to lie down in the
home corner covered with a blanket,
we let them. If the clay table still works
after two weeks, we leave it for children
to squeeze, massage and roll; we might
add wet clay or new moulds or pictures of
things children might make, but novelty
isn’t the key—pleasure, satisfaction and
interaction are.
This service, as many others do, uses
gardening and pets to promote children’s
wellbeing and learning.
With the EYLF focus on ‘belonging’ in
mind, many settings go out of their way to
make people—children and adults—feel
welcome when they arrive. They purchase
comfy sofas and cane furniture and place
them in waiting areas and at the entry to
the rooms.
Initially, putting the sofa in the entry
where adults bring children in the
mornings was an accident, but parents
sit on it and watch their children settle;
we can sit and talk briefly with them; they
can read a story to their child if they’ve got
time, or talk with other parents. It’s turned
out to be a lucky accident.
These settings have framed or digital
photos of children, with their friends
at the setting, with their families and
with educators. They choose materials,
furniture and fittings that reflect family and
community contexts; familiar things to
see, hear, touch and smell. In some cases,
families lend or donate artefacts from their
cultural background or family interests for
display or for children to investigate and
discuss. This builds a strong sense that ‘we
all belong here, wherever we have come
from to this place’.
