During the Term 3 holidays and over the professional learning days, the Early Learning Centre team carefully and intentionally prepared a stimulating learning environment based on girls’ interests in Term 2.

Considerable time was also invested in collaborating to embed new learning from the 2021 Reggio Emilia Research Symposium, Landscapes of Relationships: Inspiration, exchange, and dialogue for the future of childhood, attended virtually by the teachers in the holidays. This generated thought-provoking questions and we planned next steps for our ongoing learning projects. Then the lockdown was announced!

Planning very quickly transformed in response to the impending lockdown and learning was launched online. Certainly, our physical environment at school was no longer required, but the learning projects girls were engaging in at the conclusion of Term 2 were simply taken online. Seesaw, our digital platform usually used to share photos and videos of daily learning at school, was flipped, and in reverse, parents used the platform to share photos and videos with us.

Quite fortunately, for the holidays, the Mamie girls had taken home Jonquil bulbs as a part of our Butterfly Garden holiday project, linked to previous lifecycle learning and kindly donated by one of our Mamie families. The girls were required to care for their bulbs and as scientists, determine the optimal growing environment and observe the changes over time. The plan was then to return the bulbs at the start of Term 3 so they could be planted in our School garden. This of course could not occur, so the girls continued to observe their bulbs at home and planted them in their own gardens, sharing their learning through Seesaw with their educators. This created a strong link between home and school.

Furthermore, the lockdown weather certainly provided our Annie girls with an excellent provocation for their continued ‘More than Just Water’ project. The girls observed and documented the weather from home and one of our Annie girls cleverly reused a water bottle to create a rain gauge. At school, the girls had identified where water is used, so this week the girls identified and photographed where water helps us at home.

Our specialist teachers in music, library and physical education also connected with the girls over the four days of remote learning. These experiences had the girls singing, dancing, drawing, listening and responding to stories, and creating challenging obstacle courses.

We would like to say a very big thank you to our parents for connecting to the learning that was provided, and an equally big thank you to the whole Early Learning Centre team for leading and supporting the girls through this period.

Learning certainly might not have been how we planned it, but it still occurred and just like on any normal ELC day, it was different for everyone yet personally meaningful for all – parents included!