Cluster 1 delivered January and July

This course is run every January and July. Book now for Wednesday 19th July and Wednesday 2nd August.

This Cluster is made up of the following units:

• CHCECE010 - Support the holistic development of children in early childhood
• CHCECE011 - Provide experiences to support children's play and learning
• CHCECE013 - Use information about children to inform practice

There are a number of themes we will be covering during these workshops that will assist nurture, support and develop children in education and care settings.

Whilst it might seem obvious that all children are individual and will require educators to develop a relationship with them in a way that supports their individual interests, strengths and needs, this simple idea is easily overlooked when scheduling individual children within a service framework. 

The national training package has provided us with some concepts that guide us when we encourage these individual relationships.  We need to be mindful that whilst all children have unique and individual needs, we are operating from within an organisational framework and broader legal and ethical requirements.  

Key to the lessons for this month will be found in how to use daily routines as opportunities to support children to acquire and practise skills.  We will look beyond individual elements of each program and find comfort and freedom to express ourselves within a daily rhythm that is gentle and nurturing.  

We will explore development theory and learn that the stages of learning or ‘stages of development’ are not fixed in time and do not provide us with a template for every child.  What they do is encourage us to think about the child’s journey into maturity and the different ‘steps’ along the way.  

Every child will take different amounts of time at each stage but most will experience these stages at some point along the way.  We will explore strengths and support the child to develop parts of themselves that are challenging.

All children being individuals will require educators to be knowledgeable about where they are at in their journey to maturity so that we can both challenge and affirm development, to encourage the child to experience new things and gain a fuller sense of individuality.  

It is our primary role to nurture and engage the children in trust in themselves and their educators to extend their experiences to create an ‘experience bank’ where the child can explore a greater sense of identity.

Every child deserves a full ‘experience bank’ regardless of their ability or background.  Where we identify that children are not meeting expected developmental milestones, we will explore a framework that includes specialists and seeks advice from organisations who can provide integration aids and support with programming.

Whilst our Certificate III students will be focussing on supporting wholistic development and providing experiences to support play and learning, our Diploma students will be extending this learning by analysing programming to support sustainability in early childhood.