News
'Thinking' project given grant
21 Jun 2007
Nursery World reported that the project 'Supporting Young Children's Thinking' has been awarded a £60,000 grant, from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation for the second phase. The project creates training materials for practitioners on ways of building young children's thinking.
The first project provided materials that helped adults provoke children's thinking and the second stage will attempt to gauge young children's thinking in their self-initiated play. A new DVD featuring children from birth to five years is being produced with different scenarios and will be launched by spring 2008. The new project director, Marion Dowling - an early years consultant, was quoted and said:
"What the DVD is aiming to do is capture images of the children engrossed in self-chosen and self-initiated play. It could be an adult provocation of ideas, but then we want it to be the children's self-chosen play. We want practitioners to tune into their thinking and then encourage them to select materials and imitate play with others."
The materials are being piloted at four local authorities with 18 national training sessions planned for later this year. Ms Dowling commented that with the EYFS including a section on creativity and critical thinking, the project was timely with an increase in training needed on young children's thinking.
(Nursery World, 21 June 2007)
