Greenwich seminars and conference

A blog post has been long overdue, partially due to procrastination on my part and also due to spending quite a bit of time up north with family which meant that I unfortunately meant that I missed a few seminars.

The early years team at Greenwich however couldn't be better and kept me up to date on what was discussed at the prior seminars. It was lovely to return to the seminars and the conference and how well they were both attended. I also was very lucky to be asked to share my experiences, with using iPads with children and the staff, at a seminar at that the conference.

Although the conference seminar groups were relatively small, it gave us plenty of opportunities to share our practices with the iPads and to discuss any issues that had arisen as well as providing networking opportunities.

Mathematics and critical thinking

Sometimes getting past numbers and counting is difficult and some practitioners are not confident in going in depth with mathematical and scientific concepts.

Tonights early years seminar at the university of Greenwich was an interesting concept which involved mathematics, creative thinking and food!
The task was to make a caterpillar using the items on the table and as you can see from the pictures we are an uniquely creative group!



The activity showed how individual perspectives can influence end products as well as how to approach the task.

Interesting enough I have recently been looking at the Nrich mathematics project from Cambridge, for ideas we could implement in the nursery.





It reminded me of a shape activity that we did at the nursery based on a Nrich activity where each person was given a loop of string, paper pens, cello tape and elastic bands. They were asked to think of a shape based activity using some or all of the items and to report back to the group. We had 2d, 3d shapes, outlines, shapes within shapes.....








Sometimes it helps to not having a set plan and specific outcome.