At Pippins we use a technique called planning in the moment to support your child’s learning. The idea is that, rather than getting all the children to do set activities, we respond to what is interesting to your child at that moment in time. Current research on children’s learning says that children receive the most benefit when staff respond to their current interests or immediate things in their world. We all know how much easier it is to learn about something that you’re interested in! Planning in the moment helps to embed a love of learning in your child, which will pave the way for more formal learning at school.
We still make sure we have out a variety of toys and craft activities, which are changed regularly. We then use those activities to engage your children in conversation and other activities – we talk about the feel of the playdough, or what’s cooking in the play kitchen. We may have weekly topics on occasion, just not every week.
Your child might be playing with the zoo animals. A member of staff would have a conversation with them about zoos, and perhaps suggest visiting the craft area. Together with the staff member, your child might rummage through the junk modeling basket to see what sort of animal they could make.
When you come to collect your child at the end of the day, your child presents you with an elephant fashioned from a milk bottle and lots of excited stories about all the different animals that live in zoos, while another child is busy pretending to fly a rocket and chatting about the planets.
While planning in the moment might make it harder for you to predict what your child may be learning at Pippins on any given day, we will keep you informed via Tapestry and the formal reports on how we’ve helped your child to progress.
