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Yeah Baby! is a specialist conference concerned with the education and care of our infants from birth to three years of age. This one-day conference runs from 9am-3pm on a Saturday and includes trade fair, and great seminar and workshops style presentations. The format for the day ensures delegates will return to their early childhood settings affirmed and inspired with up-to-date research as well as practical advice, guidance and solutions all relevant to work and play with children under 3. New information is shared each year and each programme varies according to region.
Programme:
9-10.30am: Toni Christie - Toddlers: A taxonomy of needs and rights
What do our precious toddlers need? What rights do we empower them to exercise?
When we understand the specific development, needs, and rights of these unique little humans, we can support them in their quest to better understand the world around them. Toni Christie will share research and practical examples of supporting toddlers’ needs for safety, relationships, boundaries, conflict, and resilience. She will also explore their rights to power, autonomy, nature, play and to be understood by the excellent role-models who care for and educate them with love.
10.30-11am: morning tea
11am-11.45am: Su Garrett – A cohesive team of infant educators
How do educators working with babies develop an environment for children that supports the regulation of educators and children? Using values-based inquiry, educators can collaborate to create an environment where they feel supported by each other, where resources are engaged with meaningfully and children and families experience a sense of belonging and safety. Su Garrett will share how educators at Explore & Develop Annandale have engaged deeply with Childspace resources to guide the creation of a team contract for their baby team. How this process enabled educator’s practice and how it is used to guide and support practices. Specifically highlighting the effect this has had on educators’ sense of well-being and their practice in relation to children and families.
11.45am-12.30pm: Andi Salamon - Baby-Play: Enacting infants’ right to quality play-based learning
Intentionality and play-based learning are among the key practices of Australian early childhood education (ECE), but intentionality and play in infant pedagogy can be challenging. Differing understandings about what intentional teaching is and classic developmental perspectives about play can constrain the quality of educators’ practices in ECE with babies. At the same time, our youngest citizens have a right to sophisticated, contemporary pedagogy that promotes their holistic learning, development, and wellbeing. In this session Andi Salamon will explore perspectives on play with infants that more closely align with new understandings about their unique developmental capacities. She will present Baby-Play, a research and practice based model of playful, participatory games that draw on babies’ sophisticated cognitive, social and emotional development, to optimise holistic ECE experiences of very young children and enact their right to quality play-based learning. Andi will also consider the implications of this kind of play as a tool to promote co-regulation for both educators and babies’ wellbeing in practice.
12.30-1.15pm: lunch and a chance to check out the trade fair
1.15-2.45pm: Robin Christie - Power and Place – Recent Thoughts on Infant and Toddler Learning Spaces
Our infant and toddler environments reflect who we are as a learning community – curious, functional, and beautiful! This lively presentation will share recent work from the Childspace Workshop in Wellington and explore the rationale behind these designs. From designing outdoor sleep spaces to the importance of indoor/ outdoor transition zones, from the role of physical symbols in emerging literacy to outdoor nappy change units - join teacher and ECE environment designer Robin Christie to find out what’s been keeping him awake at night!
General admission price: $210
Subscriber's price: $190
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