Recognizing our Gifts, Empowering our Growth
The conference “Recognizing our Gifts, Empowering our growth” is a transformative gathering designed to forge deeper connections and ignite empowerment. Families and early learning professionals will come together to explore their potential and recognize their strengths with these three enriching workshops: “The Power of Play”, which unlocks the magic of play in fostering holistic development; “Healthy Leadership”, empowering participants with the tools to become affective and compassionate leaders: and “Aggression: What’s behind the Behavior and How to Help”, fostering understanding and offering strategies to support children’s emotional growth. Early Years Professionals Community of Practice afternoon session.
This conference has been organized by Circle of Indigenous Nations Society (COINS), Supported Child Development(SCD), and the Kootenay Boundary, West Kootenay, and Trail & Castlegar Child Care Resource & Referral (CCRR) programs.
- Capacity: Filling Up
Hourly Schedule
Friday, September 22
- 8:45 am - 9:00 am
- Registration
- 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
- Power Of Play:Exploring The Vital Role Of Play In Emotional Health & Learning
- The research is clear: young children learn and develop best through play. In a world that has replaced play with entertainment, we are seeing the dire side effects of this cultural shift as aggression and anxiety in children is at an all time high. This conversation has never been more important as we look to how we can support children's emotional health and learning. We’ll unpack the science behind why play is the perfect medium for children to learn about and digest their world. We will explore how play lowers anxiety and aggression, builds resilience, fosters social and emotional health as well as increasing natural curiosity and engagement with learning. You will learn key strategies for how to create a nourishing play-based environment as well as practical applications you can use to support children in deepening their learning. Discover fluid, nonlinear and indirect ways to harness the power of how children learn and grow best.
- 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Healthy Leadership: Becoming the Leader our Children Need
- his workshop will support participants in understanding how to build, feed, protect, and extend the child-caregiver relationship. What type of leadership helps kids to feel safe? How can we as caregivers build relationships in which our children want to follow us? How can we become their compass point? Participants will learn practical relationship-based strategies that they can use every day to shift their individual relationships with children. Discover the vital importance of your caring leadership in the lives of children and why it is needed now, more than ever. *Perfect for early childhood educators, caregivers and parents. Basically anyone who leads and loves children.
Saturday, September 23
- 9:00 am - 11:00 am
- Aggression: What’s behind the behavior and how to help
- A child’s behaviour tells us something about their inner world. Drawing on the developmental insights of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, we will explore some of what is behind the challenging behaviours that we see in our students. What’s the emotion behind aggression? What can we do to address aggression at its root instead of getting caught up in the cycle of managing symptoms? This workshop will explore the emotion behind aggression as well as look to ways we can reduce outbursts in our classrooms.
- 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- EARLY YEARS PROFESSIONALS ONLY: Community of Practice
- Community of Practice format in the Muriel Griffiths Recital Room at Charles Bailey, up to 80 educators to discuss group scenarios considering what to do in the moment and what to do all the time, this will be based of the mornings information (and the Friday if you attended).
