Childcare & Education Expo London 2024: Seminars

Strong Foundations: Neuroscience and Emotional Development in the Early Years

One of the great things about the Childcare and Education Expo seminars is that they offer a real opportunity to dive into complex subjects that we might not otherwise encounter. A great example is Sandi Phoenix’s fascinating talk, Strong Foundations: Neuroscience and Emotional Development in the Early Years, which she gave on Friday 1st March.

Morton Michels’ Marketing Manager, Emma Kain-Barrett was in the audience. Emma is responsible for getting Morton Michels’ message out into the world, and naturally, a strong understanding of psychology is important to achieving this. While the session was of course focussed on children, much of the discussion was relevant to adults too!

While neuroscience might seem a long way removed from the world of early education, Sandi’s talk made it clear that it could have a lot to teach professionals in the sector. Current scientific research around the brain can tell us a lot about how to help young children understand their emotions, and even bring into question some common techniques such as using facial expression cards. Context, here, is everything. This might all so sound quite heavy, but Sandi brought the talk to life with audience participation – and emojis!

The session challenged some of the preconceptions many of us have. A lot of us had heard the common misconception that we have a ‘lizard brain,’ an ancient fear centre that controls our most primal emotions. This, according to Sandi, is not true. Instead the brain is a complex network of hubs for processing emotions, and not only that, emotions are constructed, not innate. This means facial expressions alone cannot be used to interpret a child’s emotions. Context, cultural and individual factors all play their role.

Something else we took away from the talk was that the human brain is not fully developed at birth, and in fact it is still developing well into adulthood, often not completing the process until the mid-20s! With mental health a concern for adults and children alike, we could all benefit from a stronger understanding of how our emotions develop.

Sandy Phoneix is Managing Director of Phoenix Support for Educators Pty Ltd

Play as a Vehicle for Learning
Continuous Provision - The Best Kept Secret in Early Years

James McDonald is Morton Michels’ Business Development Manager and is no stranger to the importance of play. In his role looking after our Children’s Activity Franchises, he can often be found participating in games, dancing, singing, or occasionally being chased around by children wilding nerf guns. It’s all in a days’ work for the insurance sector! So it was no surprise that he volunteered to attend both of Alistair Bryce-Clegg’s talks on the subject of play and continuous learning.

Alistair is very much a fixture of the Childcare and Education Expo. His talks routinely sell out and it is easy to see why. His enthusiasm is infectious and his knowledge is second to none. No-one walks out of one of his talks still thinking believing that playful learning is the same as play! This is, of course, a subject that the sector is very aware of. There is often a feeling amongst play workers professionals that play is not being used correctly. Alistair’s talk offered a number of useful tips and advance on how to fix this, and maximise children’s potential.

The two-talk format was effective, giving Alistair the space to develop the theory of play in the morning, while in the afternoon he was able to give some more practical advice on how to put it into practice. The idea behind continuous learning is to create spaces to ensure learning can continue after the teaching is done. This could sound quite clinical and controlled, but Alistair made it clear that does not need to be. While children need tools and resources, they don’t need to be told how to use them, they can discover this on their own. They can even benefit from utilising messy spaces for their play and development!

A final takeaway was that children need to find connections. Role play and mini worlds are fantastic, but they need to be based around things children can engage with. While a jungle or arctic environment might look exciting to adults, it might not mean much to children who have never been to either environment. On the other hand, giving them access to something familiar like a kitchen or a car will enable them to connect.

Alistair Bryce Clegg is from ABC Does Ltd