In the 1970s, feminists pushed for children’s services that recognised the need for care for children whose mothers had jobs. In 2015, the situation has reversed. Feminists and others concerned about good social policies need to push the rights of children to funded children’s services, regardless of whether the child’s “primary” carer has job-related activities. […]
You’ve enrolled your child. You’ve bought the uniform. Have you had the talk? Don’t wait for school to do it. Now is the time to think about the values and technology activities of your family and start talking about them with your pre-schooler . School looms large in the minds of pre-schoolers and their parents […]
Hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged Australian children will be worse off from next week following government changes to childcare funding which mean they will receive fewer hours of early education. While the government’s Families Package of A$3.5 billion in new investment is expected to leave most working families better off, the cuts to the hours […]
In many countries children under five have a legal right to access early childhood education and care services and Australia needs to do the same, and SA Premier Jay Weatherill’s proposal is worth considering, writes Samantha Page, CEO of Early Childhood Australia. This week a range of service providers discussed the idea of a ‘service […]
How do curious and thoughtful young children who can work, play and learn together become part of high conflict and violent relationships as adults? How does a child go from being an inquiring, kind preschooler to a young person or adult that abuses and assaults the people they love? This transition begins at some point and […]
In this blog post, QUT School of Early childhood researcher, Kate Williams talks about parenting and its influence on children’s self-regulation, and ways in which early childhood professionals can best engage parents around this topic. Self-regulation is the ways in which we all regulate our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour so that we can be […]
At the end of my son’s pre-school year, his teacher came up to have a chat. “Larissa” she said “Normally, my assistant and I spend a lot of time in the cubby house sorting out squabbles between children. This year, we spent much less time dealing with fighting children. We discovered that your son was […]
When I heard the news about the attacks in Paris, I’d just come back from walking along the pier at St Kilda beach. The skies were grey, there was a light drizzle falling, and there were many boats of various shapes and sizes bobbing on the waves. I had the ubiquitous white ear buds pumping […]
We have just celebrated National Children’s Week, a yearly acknowledgement of the importance of child rights in Australia. 2015 was a particularly auspicious year, as it marked 25 years since the creation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The theme was “Children’s Rights are Human Rights”. This critical document […]
Incorporating culture into the curriculum In May, a group of us from Queen Elizabeth Childcare Centre attended the ECA Reconciliation Symposium held in Adelaide. Wanting more insight and knowledge surrounding reconciliation and Aboriginal culture we attended with high expectations and enthusiasm and things have certainly snowballed from there. We came back to our service inspired […]
