Ann Hutchings has developed a presentation on Building a Permanent Collection, to showcase the flexible and collaborative environment that her team of caregivers at Graybridge Malkam has created to adapt to the diverse and changing needs of the children in their care.
I spoke with Ann Hutchings, last week, and was impressed by her passion and commitment to supporting children and families that are new to Canada through their challenging time of transition. Ann described how they developed a permanent collection of resources that are available to bring out as needed.
Ann laughs when she says that, “Storage can be an issue, but we’re not pack rats!” If something breaks, the team analyzes it and decides on its inherent play value and uses. Ann feels that there are too many plastic toys with one use that are blocking creativity.
Having been in the field of Early Childhood Education for 35 years, and focusing on newcomer children for the last ten, Ann has an interesting perspective of her program and others like it.
Ann sees LINC caregivers as pioneers in the field of newcomer child care. She appreciates all of the worldly experience, philosophies and training of the professionals that she works with, and believes that they have been able to create a better program through collaboration.
You can hear the respect in her voice when Ann talks about the team of caregivers at Graybridge Malkam – she describes them as specialists in the field of newcomer child care!
As a group, they have been trained all over the world – and Ann tells me that they make a genuine effort to work as a team and combine all the best of what they have learned! Their goal is to offer a play-based program, with an emergent curriculum that is very child-directed and fluid. Through observation, and what Ann calls “supervision without interference,” caregivers witness the creative play that comes naturally to the children in their care.
“In an emergent curriculum,” Ann says, “the children provide the ideas for programming, and the caregivers simply think of exciting ways to add to their play!”
If you’re interested in hearing more, Ann is offering a workshop at the upcoming Ontario Professional Development for LINC Childminders conference on October 28-29th.
Click here to download the PDF Building your Permanent Collection in Child Care
