4 pm Tuesday 21st June UK time

Join Robin LIVE as he introduces you to his thoughts and learnings from The Mouse House.

'The Mouse House' tracks the development of one of the many ideas that the children conceived during a 1998 Sightlines Initiative project.

Lots of theories and stories emerged through the inspiration the natural environment had on the Children's creative and curious minds. It is available here in our bookstore. 

This will be a FREE live presentation (our first one). AND there’ll be a Q&A session at the end to ask Robin your questions.

You do need to register to be part of the presentation, so please do this now. 

Then on the day before the event, we will send you an email which includes a link.  This link will take you to a page where we will be screening the presentation at 4pm on Tuesday 21 June.  So all you need is access to your email, a pen, a notebook and a cuppa!

We’ll also send all registrants a recording after the event, just in case you can't make it live. But please do try to make it live. Speak to you then!

Our book Adventuring in Early Childhood Education is now being read by colleagues in other countries, and many useful and interesting questions are being asked:

In this online presentation Robin will explore aspects of these questions, in live dialogue with Prof. Asami Asayama, University of Yamanashi, Japan. Robin will be illustrating the discussion with one of the narratives in the book ‘Adventuring in Early Childhood Education:

• ’What do we mean by ‘adventuring’ – and for whom? Children? Adults?
• Why ‘adventuring’?
• What is a ‘creative enabler’?
• What does ‘taking charge’ look like?

This will be a FREE live presentation: You do need to register to view and contribute, so please do this now. There’ll  be a Q&A chatline-based session at the end to ask your questions.

On the day before the event, we will send you an email which includes a link. This link will take you to a page where we will be screening the presentation at 4pm on Tuesday 20 Sept. So all you need is access to your email, a pen, a notebook and a cuppa!

We’ll also send all registrants a recording after the event, just in case you can't make it live. But please do try to make it live. Speak to you then!

• Are you looking for ways in which your children can explore their world through music and movement?
• Are you intrigued by this concept and want to know more?

Then get access (for free) to Dogs, Bones and Dancing.

This online slideshow/video summarises our 2 year project with a nursery and primary school in Kendal. Discover what we did, what we learned, what obstacles we faced and how the children engaged.

We are making this free to view: you just have to register: when you do, you'll be sent the link.

Erasmus+ EU funding is continuing to provide registered UK early childhood settings and schools with valuable opportunities to be ambitious with your pedagogical development visions and plans.

Yes, the application process is complex, but provides a highly valuable context and opportunity for professional enhancement and exchange through Key Action 1.
Participants in past study weeks in Reggio, in our Skylight 2017 group have benefitted from this financial enablement, and notably Medeley Nursery School have undertaken international projects under the Key Action 2 Strategic Partnerships scheme.

The Erasmus+ funding window is imminent, and is relatively brief (October 2018 – Feb 2019.) We have been advised by The British Council, who manage UK applications “eligibility to apply for Erasmus+ funds during this period will remain unchanged for the duration of projects under the current programme. On this basis, the UK Government encourages UK organisations to continue to bid for Erasmus+ funding. You can find more information about this at https://www.erasmusplus.org.uk/brexit-update  . Our Erasmus+ deadlines for 2019 have not yet been released. We expect these deadlines to be released in late October. If you have not already, we would advise signing up to the Erasmus+ newsletter, which will inform recipients when the new deadlines are announced. You can subscribe to this newsletter at https://www.erasmusplus.org.uk/subscribe-to-our-newsletter.”

Application Process Surgery
In order to help people prepare successfully for applications, we are offering a free online advice surgery for Sightlines Initiative Members. (If you are not a member you can pay a one-off £30  to join the event, or alternatively: join the network first!

Network Proposal: Languages of Evaluation, Actions of Re-cognition

This is an introduction to a research proposal focussing on, yes, evaluation

This will be an online presentation and introduction by Peter Moss, Robin Duckett and Louise Lowings. Peter Moss will  discuss the situation as he sees it, and has introduced at conferences in Canada and the United States; Robin Duckett will introduce the project proposal; Louise Lowings will introduce work which her Nursery School has begun in this respect.

Metaphor is a festive intuition, a sudden explosion, a form of thought that enlights the way our mind works when it crosses and broadens its field of knowledge. During the seminar we will use what is known, daily perceptions around us, to reach, touch, feel what we still don’t know. We will communicate new discoveries lying in the new territory of metaphors where words are spells which bring us closer as human beings.

We will explore how the process of creating metaphors leads to unusual, unexpected and original procedures and perspectives. We will try out how this is an attitude of investigation and participation in reality, which pushes us to open up and expand canonical boundaries.

The seminar will also encourage to ride paradoxes, as children usually do to research the world around and interact with adults, jumping from an uncoscious to a conscious process in everyday life. We will see how games, transformation hypotheses, paradoxes, find their opportunity to develop through conjunction / relationship with another subject and new relationships / visions, in a word, through metaphors.

This seminar is designed to inform the current Sightlines Initiative early childhood pedagogy action-research project into Visual Metaphor. It is free to Sightlines Initiative subscribers.

It will also be pertinent to all who are interested in the ways in which adults tune in to young children’s thinking and learning.

Viviana Fiorentino was born and grew up in southern Italy. After achieving her Doctorate, travelled across Europe, from Switzerland to Germany, England and finally Belfast where she now lives, writing novels and poetry, teaching Italian literature, and leading creative writing workshops for cultural minorities.
In 2018, she was awarded two Italian poetry prizes. Her poems have appeared in literature blogs and international magazines. A selection of her poems is published in ‘Writing Home: the New Irish poets’. In 2019, she published a poetry collection in Italy and her first novel.
She has been involved in many different festivals, poetry readings and projects, such as the 2019. ‘Sky, you are too big’, which revolved around the themes of travelling, migration and displacement.
She is in the editorial staff of Carteggi Letterari (Italian periodical Lit magazine) with the column ‘Neither here, nor there’ and she periodically writes for the magazine TerreLibere about migration and politics.

Focus Group: Doing Education amidst covid 19

Since the inception of Sightlines Initiative in in 1997 we have been working, through professional projects, research andexchanges, to advocate creative and reflective early childhood pedagogy. 

In the context of the Covid 19 pandemic, how can we ‘do school’; build educational environments where children's learning flourishes?

There are clearly many challenges: 

• the conservative UK building size norms have resulted in small classrooms and centres with large group sizes, right across the age span. However spaciousness is called for to support social distancing.
• Can we have co-constructive learning  and do social distancing?
• In non-statutory (early childhood) education and daycare, how can staffing and budgetary stability be achieved?
• What children are overtly missing most is sociability and sociable enquiry:
• Our framework for developing pedagogy is founded upon building learning environments of ENCOUNTER, ENQUIRY, EXCHANGE, EXPRESSION ... can the circle be squared?

We are hosting three online discussion groups – on 21st, 26^th and 28^th May (all 2 - 3.30 pm) for UK Heads, Managers, Class Teachers, governors who are faced with these questions, are dedicated to developing co-constructive education, and who want to exchange situations and ideas. 

The maximum size will be 16 in order to maximise exchange. 

Update - these sessions have filled up quickly and we may offer more. If you are interested in this, please add your name to the Waiting List on the Thursday 28th date.

Focus Group: Doing Education amidst covid 19

Since the inception of Sightlines Initiative in in 1997 we have been working, through professional projects, research andexchanges, to advocate creative and reflective early childhood pedagogy. 

In the context of the Covid 19 pandemic, how can we ‘do school’; build educational environments where children's learning flourishes?

There are clearly many challenges: 

• the conservative UK building size norms have resulted in small classrooms and centres with large group sizes, right across the age span. However spaciousness is called for to support social distancing.
• Can we have co-constructive learning  and do social distancing?
• In non-statutory (early childhood) education and daycare, how can staffing and budgetary stability be achieved?
• What children are overtly missing most is sociability and sociable enquiry:
• Our framework for developing pedagogy is founded upon building learning environments of ENCOUNTER, ENQUIRY, EXCHANGE, EXPRESSION ... can the circle be squared?

We are hosting three online discussion groups – on 21st, 26^th and 28^th May (all 2 - 3.30 pm) for UK Heads, Managers, Class Teachers, governors who are faced with these questions, are dedicated to developing co-constructive education, and who want to exchange situations and ideas. 

The maximum size will be 16 in order to maximise exchange. 

Update - these sessions have filled up quickly and we may offer more. If you are interested in this, please add your name to the Waiting List on the Thursday 28th date.