Month: October 2017

Healthy recipes for children

Finding new, delicious and nutritious recipes for young children can be a struggle at the best of times. We have created a printable selection of recipes that have been tried and tested by some of our youngest scrutineers. This involved testing using all of their senses, and we can safely say the selected recipes passed with flying colours! Cauliflower Tots Healthy Fruit...

/ October 29, 2017

Storypark provides a time efficient, holistic planning platform for whole centre planning

Lynne, an early childhood educator for Nelson Tasman Kindergarten Association in New Zealand has been using Storypark’s new planning feature for several months with Nayland Kindergarten and shared with us her experiences and how this service plans holistically with their staff, children and families. Due to the successful experience, NTKA is hoping to roll the new planning platform out to...

/ October 25, 2017

Planning with Storypark helps teachers succeed at Te Puna Reo o Ngā Kākano

Tānia Gaffey is a dedicated early childhood educator and mentor who has shared her experiences with using Storypark’s new planning tools and how Te Puna Reo o Ngā Kākano (an urban-based, kaupapa Māori, Bronze Enviroschool in Thorndon, Wellington) have customised plans to suit their unique curriculum. In New Zealand, Provisionally Certificated Teachers (often newly qualified educators) need to complete induction and training...

/ October 25, 2017

She’s perfect

A mother’s letter she wrote to herself 2 years after her beautiful daughter was born with Down Syndrome. Frankie has just been born, she looks up at you with her beautiful almond-shaped eyes and you know immediately that she has Down Syndrome. In that moment the first words that tumble out of your mouth are ‘she’s perfect.’ And she is....

/ October 16, 2017

Families collaborate on planning for children’s learning at Norman Park Kindergarten

Kara is a dedicated educator at Norman Park Kindy in Brisbane, has been a Storypark user for three years, and has written before about the impact Storypark has on her work as a teacher and on the lives of the children she works with. Before the new planning tool was released, the teachers at Norman Park Kindy planned using a...

/ October 15, 2017

Expanding our notion of family to include the Rainbow Family

Kath Cooper is back again to talk more about Rainbow Families. While celebrating and acknowledging all family compositions is important, time and again it is the unnoticed family structures that need a little more ‘love and attention’ from teachers. Rainbow Families are one of those. In this blog, acceptance of Rainbow Families will be discussed. A Rainbow Family is a...

/ October 15, 2017

How to use the Marte Meo Supportive Communication Learning set

Dutch born, Maria Aarts, studied parent-child interactions for 40 years across various countries and cultures. She recognised the difficulties in explaining scientific observations of a child’s problems to parents and other educators and in turn developed ‘Marte Meo‘. Marte Meo means ‘One’s own strength’ and is a method which is widely used in 43 countries. It gives parents and caregivers information that’s not only...

/ October 9, 2017

Plan the way that works for your early learning service with Storypark

What does the new planning feature do? Well, quite a few things it turns out! Storypark’s new planning feature was designed and developed on the advice of our partners and users who told us they need a better way to collaborate around their programme and curriculum planning. After listening to educators around the world, we realised that everyone plans differently...

/ October 4, 2017

Plan for everything from QIPs to appraisals with Storypark’s planning tools

Shirley Fyfe from East Sale Kindergarten shares her experiences with using the new Storypark planning tool, and the outcomes the service has seen since using planning across all aspects of their service. East Sale Kindergarten is located at the RAAF base in Victoria, Australia, and is a non-profit cluster-managed service providing sessional 3 and 4-year-old Kindergarten to children in the local...

/ October 4, 2017

Planning with consistency and coherency at Daisies Early Education and Care Centre

Before Daisies Early Education and Care Centre used Storypark’s planning tools, their planning mostly took place on many notebooks and pieces of paper, which made keeping track of what different age groups had been exploring and investigating difficult. Since implementing the planning tool at their centre, Daisies have mostly been using it for their investigation work with children – for...

/ October 3, 2017