Let them say it themselves, then – although the emphases and editing are entirely mine.

Enhancing children’s development is skilful work, and practitioners need training and professional support to do it well, including making decisions about children’s individual needs and the ways to ‘personalise’ their learning.

Talking about feelings has beneficial effects. Although this has been a self-evident truth for decades, new research on ‘Social and emotional aspects of learning’ for children shows how it benefits learners of all ages, even children under four.

Formative assessment will lie at the heart of providing a supporting and stimulating environment for every child. This may require professional development for practitioners and liaison with individuals and agencies outside the setting.

The art of early years practice is getting the balance right between guided and self initiated learning, either in homes or in settings.

Skillful work. Art. Balance.

The excitement of helping a child melt a handprint into frost.

Knowing when to swap the sand for cooked spaghetti, or to put a plastic penguin in a tub of water in the freezer for tomorrow.

And from the point of view of ‘health promotiong activities?’

Is the In Depth section for EYFS Health and Well Being really sufficient?

However I have to usher in a new year of postings with this link to the EYFS literature review that Maria Evangelou and colleagues from OUDES and Mary Wild and Georgina Glenny from the Westminster Institute have worked on together.

Here’s the best new year picture so far, anyway.

The most immediate answer is that I know where it used to be; it used to be on the doorstep of the storyteller.  But of course it doesn’t stay where we left it, not least because we, the audience, have moved off. We moved off from clearings to common land to enclosed fields, and then to the towns, with our stories as cultural baggage in the handcart. We moved into a wolf-free country, then into a country where there is less darkness. We might argue that the stories we brought with us retained their currency because we brought the darkness with us too - but maybe this is a little fanciful, and while it might take us some way to an answer to a spiritual question, it doesn’t help me answer my research question much.

More on this when I can, in the research pages.

Why this should have struck me in the bath while reading Mark Rowlands‘ book on living with his wolf, I don’t really know, but perhaps I need to think more about the figures of the wild if I’m going to write about the outdoors, than about the children who go into the woods. More weasels, fewer moles.

Or at least, it’s a separate section - what one meets in the (fictional) outdoors.

Like this Cynocephalus.

I have two books in front of me as I write. One is the book I was going to write about – Sandra Beckett’s Recycling Red Riding Hood – the other (Rosa’s) is the movie companion for New Moon

It strikes me that the relationship between Bella and the Native American werewolves is in some ways a Conte a l’envers, as Beckett describes them.

Working from the writings of Gianni Rodari (who has more than seventeen entries in the Beckett index), she explores how Red Riding Hood has become such a universal tale that it is possible to play with the plot (including the Perrault text and images) as a tale told “Upside Down, Inside Out and Backwards.” And in finding a heroine like Bella Swan, and placing her in the situation she does, Stephanie Meyer effectively creates a Conte a L’Envers, a mixed-up version where a young woman in the woods is the one who holds the power over the wolves who are her friends, her would-be lovers. Bella smacks a werewolf on the nose as if he were a boy stepping out of line in a soap-opera prom; we are somewhere Angela Carter might recognise.

As something of a footnote, it is interesting to see this reversal taken even further in the movie book I have in front of me, where the wolves, however terrifying they are as wolves, are, in human form, mostly young and lacking in much body hair, exemplified in the website a - very far from the older, predatory wolves in so much of the Red Riding Hood iconography, yet drawing on the idea of the wargus (see this entry) as on the margins of society.

Beckett takes the wonderful Zipes exploration of Red Riding Hood to a new stage. She uses a European overview - rather she uses an understanding of countless retellings in Europe - to look at what Rodari calls A sbagliare le storie, Getting Stories Wrong, and what other contemporary writers identify as Upside-down stories.  Ths method is exemplary; it allows Beckett to explore the variety of Riding Hood stories (if Zipes removes the ‘little,’ Beckett presents a rainbow of different coloured hoods!), and in doing so to look again at what makes this story so special.  Hats off to her - hoods down, whatever - for updating the critical literature to include exploration of two lacunae in Zipes’ book: The wolves in the Ahlbergs, notably in Jeremiah in the Dark Woods and the Jolly Postman, and the RRH tales of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.

A compare-and-contrast with the Rose review would be tempting if time-consuming, and would feel like Harry Hill’s TV Burp where two improbable ideas or characters are represented in a playground fight….

So for now here are the links without too much comment, except to note the follwing reactions -  from Julian Grenier (as one example from the DCSF site) and Diane Hofkins (linked from the Cambridge Primary site)

The more I think of there really being chalk pits in Suffolk, the more I want to explore more deeply my assumptions about the universal mythic landscape. A sideline about a pub called “The Lime  Burners” and here is their link - suggests to me all those out-of-town (or out of settlement) occupations that might have been part of the storyteller’s landscape.  Quarriers, limekiln workers, miners (like the seven dwarfs?), charcoal burners - all people whose occupation maybe allowed them a little latitude.  It is interesting that charcoal is now something of a tourist attraction, even mentionedin the sanitised Suffolk walks discussed here. I suspect no-one on these well-signposted walks will discover demonic figures gleefully plotting by a fire!

Is this part of a warning myth, as I’ve speculated before? Part of a recognition that people away from the huddle of village and town are not recognised? Not “one of us”?

Philip Pullman, in today’s Observer, is deep in Bettelheimland when he talks about the Fairy Tale protagonists and their struggle for Independence and adulthood - and maybe this is where the two themes intertwine, although this is merely conjecture:

Is there a warning about the ‘others’  in the woods because they are dangerous, or because they represent a possible different set of choices? A world away from the close-knit and settled farming community?

Or is it that, for adventures to take place for the young, the protective adult needs to be absent?

It doesn’t answer my query about Tom Tit Tot, though.

Just looking back at previous posts, notably this one and this, exploring notions of pedagogy in the early Years, I am struck by the poor structure of the new FS website.

Look at this link. I had thought this would take me to the stuff it “used” to, about assessment in Learning and Development, but it’s now taken up with CPD issues. I have no earthly reason to dislike CPD really, but where is the rationale for the structure?

And where do I find those fantastic clips of children playing that are so illustrative of the kind of good practice in EY? Surely this is clumsy planning, not a real philosophy of education that equates CDP with high quality play and meaningful interaction with children?

So, after a bit of a hunt, here are:

A video (2 and a half minutes) of a real observation session - all the more valuable because the practitioner is hard pressed to keep her observation and the conversation going!

Another of outdoor play (about the same length) and another on a wet day in the sand pit.

I do like this last one. Maybe the interaction isn’t perfect (I’ve yet to see real footage that is), but it does underline the importance of talk wherever and whenever it’s needed. Even huddled under a rain-spattered awning.

And I have to go back to Ellis and his trap for baddies http://testsandexams.qcda.gov.uk/19384.aspx

Autumn

A significant detail in Jacobs’ telling of Tom Tit Tot, especially since this story has a cognate in Rumplestiltskin that has rather that precedence over the English version, and according to a much earlier commentator, has much in common with a range of stories world wide in which magic secrets overheard allow someone to escape some nemesis. The English story, of course, needs the demonic Tom not to be readily available, but his not expecting to be overlooked is itself worth mentioning. The creature is in ‘an old chalk pit’ – a hollow away from sight, like the dwelling of Stig in Clive King’s book – but an oddly accurate topographical detail. Does this suggest a particular place to the original tellers and audiences? Or a particular kind of place?

If we assume Edward Clodd is correct that this is a Suffolk tale, we could ask where are “The Woods,” or “Woods with Chalk Pits?”  This one, perhaps? But does a mythic landscape need this? At times it does: stories that explain why a geographical feature is how it is depend on the audience knowing the site and wanting an explanation of the feature. Sometimes the post eventum nature of this might seem obvious, as in the Robin Hood connections in Sherwood or the strong suggestions of such at Tintagel. At times certain features are needed for the story: a church, a path (a crossroads for Bzou – see earlier posts), but in general woods becomes The Wood so that The Witch can live in them; they are universalized by being used as the stage set for mythology.

Even though those days are long past, it still rather surprised me that I found myself agreeing so much with this publication from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last year.

I can criticise it for the continuing misuse of Bruce’s term ‘free flow play’ when they say In all three settings we saw the principle of free-flow play clearly enacted, with children moving freely around their space

But this is nit-picking.

To start off, the research suggests that “rare for children not to be physically active when they were outside” (p64), and seems to me to offer compelling arguments for supporting good design of outdoor environments. Most important (from my point of vieew, at any rate) is the clear statement in the report (p66) that

Physically active play in early years appears to be influenced by a range of factors, not least the ethos of the setting and support and encouragement from staff at an individual child level.

It surprised me, for example, that only 9% (p57) of active play was shared with adults, with a spectrum that ranged from intense involvement to little or no involvement., although interventions were observed around behaviour management. In other words, there was some play with chidlren and a lot of supervision.  Now, that is not necessarily a bad thing: children play independnetly in the best settings, and a research report that suggests more intervention would be necessarily a good thing would be a blunt intrument indeed.

The variations in intervention are interesting; the correlations between design, adult role, quality and amount of physical play are complex and I need to unpick them a bit further. The case studies (p60ff) are worth reading even if just for their insights into children’s lives in EY settings.

The final section of Ch 6, however, might be of interest as final-year undergraduates and others look for research topics, and is offered here without further comment from me. :

6.5 Recommendations for further research

Further research is needed to build on the work started in this project. In particular:

· childrens’ views of play – eg using the Mosaic approach which uses observation, interviewing and other participatory tools to listen to young children’s perspectives (Clark and Moss, 2000)

· intensity of physical activity in different play activities in early years

· exploring differences between sub-groups of children in early years settings – for example ethnic group, social background, disability/special education needs,  geographical variations