Enrolling your child in an early childhood setting can be an anxious (and exciting) time for families, especially if it is your first child being welcomed into a learning community, like those offered at Mother Duck Child Care and Kindergarten settings. These are very normal feelings and may continue while you and your child develop relationships with the educators and other children who welcome your child into their studio (classroom). In this blog we will explore some of the questions you might like to discuss with the educators, teachers, or leadership teams to help you understand what happens in your child’s day with us. 

What did my child do today?

At Mother Duck, our curriculum is known as an inquiry curriculum. This means that we approach learning with curiosity and wonder as children begin to build theories about the world around them. In Australia, all early childhood settings (private, community, state, independent and faith based) are required to use the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) to guide the work they do with and alongside young children, birth to school age.  This framework sets out the five learning outcomes for children: 

• Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity 
• Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world 
• Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing 
• Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners 
• Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators 

This framework offers early childhood settings across Australia the flexibility to approach supporting children’s learning and development in a way that anchors it to the organisation or centre’s philosophy (beliefs and values). The centre or organisation then considers the most effective way to design a curriculum that focuses on what they believe is important for children to learn within the outcomes that the EYLF requires and the community in which the setting is located.

At Mother Duck, our curriculum focuses on supporting children’s social competence by investigating how we can set children up for success as they travel through their learning journey with us, and beyond. So, the question, “What did my child do today?” could be reframed as “What small steps did my child take today to help them develop the skills they will need for lifelong success?’.  If you have a look back at the Outcomes from the EYLF, I am sure you can see how each of them connects to becoming socially competent in the context of both education and life.

I mentioned in my last blog, a 2008 Australian study Transition: a positive start to school that found the several critical factors that support children in experiencing a positive and enjoyable beginning to their (formal) school life, with a particular focus on children’s social and emotional well-being. Having self-confidence, knowing how to participate as a member of a collaborative learning community, being able to solve problems in times of conflict or tension, being an active contributor in everyday life, and having the strategies to draw upon resilience and perseverance are key to a successful transition from an early childhood setting to the early years of formal schooling and to life beyond schooling. At Mother Duck, we are able to share snippets from your child’s day – just through short conversations with you – that demonstrate how your child is working toward these skills, bit by bit, each and every day with us.

Perhaps next time you drop your child off in the morning, or pick your child up in the afternoon, you might take a moment to look at the learning environment that your child engages with each day. This might help you see the importance placed on reading for pleasure, or researching ideas, or what role literacy has within our curriculum. It might help you understand that working with clay or paint might have a greater purpose for the children and educators than sending a painting or clay work home each day. The environment you observe might explain why we support children in slowing down, taking moments to pause, reflect or enjoy moments of joy with another child at tea or lunch. It might demonstrate how we place significance on developing the skills of writing, planning, and thinking.

We are keenly aware that many families have a lively interest in receiving regular drawings or paintings their child has done, or daily photos of their child at play, or viewing cut-and-paste artworks displayed on the wall. Our approach at Mother Duck is more about sharing your child’s learning in a more authentic way, through regular face-to-face conversations, through our formative and summative assessments, our regular curriculum-focused Facebook posts and, importantly, through the traces of children and their thinking and learning that our environments mirror back to you when you visit our settings.

Educational documentation is always on display to help you engage with the curriculum that we work with and alongside your child. Look out for the panels in the foyers that take a whole of centre view on what we are currently investigating, and the in-studio panels that zoom in on what the current focus looks like for the children in that particular studio. These panels are designed to raise questions and points of interest for you to discuss with your educating team. 

We continue to be very proud of our work at Mother Duck, but we are also focused on ensuring that our families have their questions answered and are confident that their child is developing according to their individual continuum of learning. Please reach out to your centre’s Pedagogical Coordinator if you would like more information on our curriculum and how we can help you be assured of your child’s learning and development outcomes and achievements.