We know that:

• Young children are creative, strong, powerful learners
• Educators and children thrive in creative enabling environments
• Early years and primary educators can be creative, critical and reflective.

However, it is not easy to turn beliefs, values and aspirations into practice: there's often a gap between what we want to do and what actually happens

• External pressures can push educators towards 'delivering' instruction rather than facilitating engaged learning
• Even when we encounter engaged learning, we often don't know where to start in building an appropriate pedagogy and feel disheartened.

Our Developing Environments of Enquiry framework and the related Learning to Learn in Nature context is designed for everybody who wants to resolve these dilemmas.

Here is a slideshow from our 2015 weekend, with participants comments

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The venue, travelling and staying ...

The Saturday venue is Greenwich University: a lovely and historic location on the banks of the River Thames, which has welcomed our professional developments now for the past two years. 

This GoogleMaps link will help you define your best route there, including underground across London.

There are various good hotels within Greenwich Village: we have used both DeVere Davenport and Ibis. We advise early booking, as it is a popular area for tourism.

On Sunday we will be in the nearby Oxleas Woods, travelling directly there from your overnight hotel. At lunchtime we will be provided with lovely sandwiches from the cafe in the park.

Preparing and attending ...

We highly recommend you read either of Adventuring in Early Childhood Education and Learning to Learn in Nature . Our videos  'The Sounds of Leaping', Doing The Right Thing' and 'Rising Sun Woodland Preschool' will also be useful. We have found that you are likely to benefit most through attending with colleagues: so plese do consider this as your most worthwile option. The experience itself will be much more fun for you, and you'll be much better able to make this weekend a first point in an ongoing professional development journey in your setting.