Education, play and behaviour

Education

How do we educate your children?
At Poosh our philosophy is the driving force behind our service. It is updated annually combining the views of our families, children, educators, the wider community and current research to ensure we are constantly critically reflecting on practice. Our educators collaborate with children about safe play rules, our emerging programs, as well as our environmental impact, how we respect each other, our surroundings, and the wider community . They use responsive teaching strategies and intentionality to promote each child’s curiosity in relation to their interests.

Educators listen to the conversations of children and young people and use strategies such as modeling and demonstrating, open questioning, speculating, explaining, engaging in shared thinking and problem solving to extend children and young people’s enjoyment in play, thinking and learning. They engage in assessing and monitoring of children’s wellbeing and engagement with learning life skills and citizenship. Educators utilise, with intentionality, their professional knowledge and strategies that reflect contemporary theories and research concerning children’s play, leisure and learning.

How  are children encouraged to take an active role in collaborative leadership and teamwork?   Children and young people take an active role in collaborative leadership and teamwork. Educators utilise children and young people’s own unique skills, strengths and talents. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child supports the engagement in leadership opportunities. Our primary children assist the K&1 children transition into their environment by discussing safe play, serving afternoon tea.They often run activities and organise end of term events too. These decisions occur  in partnership with educators and families

Play

At Poosh we believe that ...

We as educators are facilitators of free play, leisure and learning not providers of content. Our program contains intentional teaching experiences that have been planned based to extend children’s critical thinking and curiosities based on their interests or previous activities. Spontaneous experiences are added to future programs ensuring they are evolving, child led and based on educator and child reflections. Daily activities include sustainable activities, craft, cooking, drama, STEM, science, music, sports, and active games or children can initiate their own play-based activities. There are three centre areas for those children who prefer to relax and rest.

Programs are adjusted daily to include ideas that arise such as active games and free play options. Families are asked for feedback through surveys, suggestion boards or informal discussions with educators. This information is then filtered into our future programs. Resources are purchased in consultation with families and children. Wherever possible long lasting sustainable open-ended resources which promote creativity are purchased.

Behaviour Guidance

How do we encourage positive behaviour at Poosh?

At Poosh we focus on positive behaviour by providing positive acknowledgment, redirection, giving explanations, encouragement, and support. Educators will aim to guide rather than control the behaviour of the children in our care and will always be responsive to children’s emotions.

We are constantly collaborating with children to solve problems and helping them to understand the consequences and impact of their behaviour.

Daily educators ensure that Poosh children have an input in expectations relating to their behaviour and consequences for inappropriate behaviour are consistently applied in a calm manner encouraging children to behave within the limits. Educators will consistently model appropriate behaviour too. These daily expectations are set as we believe that children have the right to feel physically and psychologically safe. We aim to provide an environment where all children and educators feel safe, cared for and relaxed and which encourages cooperation and positive interactions between all persons (My Time, Our Place Outcome 1).

How do we manage inappropriate behaviour?

Correction Steps:

• When a child’s behaviour is deemed inappropriate or if a child’s behaviour is intrusive to another person’s enjoyment, then educators will actively intervene where reasonably practicable and take steps to attempt to resolve the situation.
• Inappropriate behaviour can include bullying, being uncooperative, not listening to reasonable requests from educators, or consistently disregarding the basic rules. This list is not exhaustive.  As a general guide, the following steps may be taken:
• The educator will re-direct the child to a different area within the play environment. If it is during rules or roll call the child may be asked to visit the RP (Responsible Person) or another area/stage if they are being disrespectful to educators or creating an unsafe environment for others. The RS will guide them to consider alternative ways of behaving following the steps below.
• The child may have a cool down period. A cooling down period is a time when a child that is having a difficult moment is encouraged to find a space, near an educator, to ‘cool down’ and regain self-control. This strategy can be used as an opportunity for educators to support children to regulate their own behaviour. The difference between ‘cool-down time’ and ‘time out’ is that an educator stays near the child and reassures and supports them to regulate their emotions during cool-down time. It is viewed as a learning opportunity, not as punishment.

• The educator will then remind the child of something positive they have achieved/ their strengths recently, then ask the child why the behaviour is inappropriate and encourage or support the child to think of a suitable resolution. It is important, when talking to the child, to encourage them to think about what they have done and how that makes others feel. We want children to develop care, empathy and respect, but there is no point in getting them to say the words “I’m sorry” without the genuine feeling. Once a resolution  has been discussed the child will rejoin a play environment in their stage when they feel comfortable to do so. Educators see the importance of mentioning to the child that everyone makes mistakes, even adults such as educators and parents. What we can do is learn from them and learn how to deal with the same situation differently next time.
• If aggressive or inappropriate behaviour continues, a child involved is distressed or is deemed serious by the educator, the child will be sent to the Responsible Person accessible by walkie talkie(channel 4) or the Responsible Person will come to the child. After a short period of time, the Responsible Person will have a discussion with the child/ren regarding their actions, and strategies to support the child will be discussed and then the child will return to play in a suitable area once the situation is resolved and they feel comfortable to do so.

Restraint

Occasionally, there may be circumstances where a child becomes a risk to themselves or others and may need to be removed from the situation or physically restrained to prevent harm to themselves or others. Children should be physically restrained only in emergency situations. Examples of emergency situations include when a child is:

• in a clearly unsafe situation, for example, attempting to scale a fence or run onto a road;

• physically threatening other children or adults;

• behaving in ways that are destructive to themselves, other people or the environment.

  A discussion with the responsible person will occur encouraging them to think about their actions and a think slip may be discussed or completed with the child if the Responsible Person thinks it would be beneficial to the child.

When educators are aware of inappropriate behaviour it will be discussed with the child, the parent/guardian and a Responsible Person. They will discuss a resolution and strategies to support the child if appropriate. If the parent/guardian does not collect the child from care a phone conversation will occur.

Bullying We view any ongoing intimidating behaviour from one child to another as an act of bullying. It is the aim of the centre to encourage the child (victim) to deal with bullying situations whilst making it clear educators are available for support and to discuss the behaviour with the children involved. Daily we set high expectations about how we treat each other, and what is deemed acceptable behaviour (incorporating the ideas of both our children and families). Often educators share scenarios with the children, so they collaborate to establish ways of dealing with inappropriate behaviour.

As child attendances change daily, we encourage children to inform educators of any concerns or worries which they need support with as soon as they occur, so that issues are dealt with immediately rather than followed up at a much later date when both children are attending care.

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