21/04/2015
Childcare News, What's New

Fingal early childhood care and education providers scoop nine awards across Innovation, Learning Stories and Síolta curriculum initiatives at the Early Childcare Ireland conference

Fingal County Childcare Committee is delighted to announce that six Fingal early childhood care and education providers scooped nine awards from Early Childhood Ireland last weekend, including the overall national award in innovation which was presented to Fiona Brogan and Amanda Corcoran from The Cottage Kids Playschool in Tyrellstown, Lusk (see picture attached).  Fingal County Childcare Committee is committed to the national strategy of supporting the common purpose of high quality early childhood services and experiences for children and families in the Fingal area.

These national awards showcase early childhood care and education services that have got it right and are broken down into three categories, with Fingal services winning across all three categories, namely:

The Innovation Awards celebrate the innovative ideas and practices, with winners showing how their research and reflections result in change and improvement for all concerned.  This year, twelve childcare providers nationally received Innovation Awards; three were from Fingal with The Cottage Kids winning the overall national innovation award.  Specifically they were:

  • Innovation in Education through Play, The Cottage Kids Playschool, Tyrellstown, Lusk, Amanda Corcoran (overall innovation award winner)
  • Innovation in Promoting Citizenship, Beverton Preschool, Donabate, Nickola Cullen
  • Innovation in Partnership with Families, Little Footsteps Creche, Swords, Joan O’Sullivan

The focus on the Learning Story Awards from Early Childhood Ireland is on teaching and learning through a world class play curriculum and capturing children’s competence and eagerness to learn and how early childhood professionals support and listen to make this happen. This year thirteen childcare providers nationally received Learning Story Awards, three were from Fingal and they were:

  • ‘Frozen’, Appleseeds Preschool and Afterschool, Swords
  • ‘Sharing a Love for Numbers’, Beverton Preschool, Donabate
  • ‘Our Road Safety Journey’, Tigger’s Playhouse, Swords

Síolta Validated Member Services 2014/2015 go to the services who have worked hard to improve across all sixteen standards of Síolta which is the early year’s curriculum and the awardees from Fingal were:

  • Beverton Preschool, Donabate
  • Kids Inc., Swords
  • The Cottage Kids, Lusk

According to the judges report, “The Cottage Kids Playschool initiative demonstrates how skilled educators share control with children as they explore and learn to understand algebra and geometry and some good old fashioned folklore , featuring the Children of Lir and Cuchulainn in their everyday activities in Cottage Kids Playschool. As well as supporting learning through play these innovative educators enable the children reflect on the mathematical concepts experienced in their play. The result was an amazing visual record of learning in action (over 200 action photos) narrated with children’s quotes and the educator’s substantial knowledge of the children and the subject. Another subject not immediately considered in early years learning is history and folklore, yet as the educators noticed the interest and funds of knowledge of some of their children demonstrated in their play was very impressive. Looking at a story book about the Children of Lir, Lottie remarks ‘That kingdom looks cracked!  Look that looks like where I live. A house with loads a leaves on it (IVY). It’s on the castle too.’ Caelan says “Yeah that looks like Malahide Castle’ Iris says ‘I know somebody from Horrible Histories and her husband died and she wore black for the rest of her life. Her name was Queen Victoria”.  One of the boy’s idols was Cuchulainn he even changed his name to Cuchulainn to emulate his hero. Can you imagine his excitement when they found a local interest storyline in The Wooing of Emer of Lusk (future wife of Cuchulainn). As a team they worked together role playing the story, by building castles, making swords, writing (drawing), acting and filming an enactment of the story outdoors in the very townland where it originally happened.  This inspirational innovation clearly shows the power of play to provide children with real learning opportunities. It demonstrates how skilled educators share control with children as they explore and learn.”