In-Person: Open-Ended Explorations: Space and Materials as Invitations

In-Person Saturday, May 24, 2025 from 9:30 am – 12:00 pm (including 30 min lunch break)

Setting up meaningful invitations, that are both aesthetically pleasing and rich in sensorial potential, have the capacity to facilitate natural curiosity, critical thinking and learning processes. Through daily proposals of engaging and relevant materials, children can expand on the learning capacities as well as deepen their understanding of the world around them. Driven by exploration and inquiry, this session will guide the participants as to how to view the materials at hand, what are the different ways of inviting children through the use of materials, and how to extend on the given responses and possibilities.

Objectives: 

• Understand the materials as ‘tools for thinking’.
• Introduce the guiding principles of aesthetics and what to keep in mind when
• choosing and setting up the materials.
• Explore how to create a fluid arrangement of materials that will engage
• children and deepen their understanding of the materials at hand as well as the
• learning concepts.
• Discuss how to extend on the proposed invitations and explorations with the
• focus on ‘shifting’ rather than changing materials.

Living Inquiries:  

• Engagement with others, materials, and the world.
• Well-being and belonging.
• Communication and literacies.
• Identities, social responsibility and diversity.

Pathways: 

• Spaces, objects, materials; Reconnection to land and place.
• Joy in relationships with people, place, materials and ideas
• Diversity and difference.
• Multiple modes of communication
• Individual differences
• Interrelationship of humans and their common worlds.

Suitable for Adult Instructors/ECE Administrators, ECE students, intermediate and experienced early care and learning professionals working with children of all ages, from infants/toddlers to school age children, including children with extra support needs.