Early Learning Matters Week
Celebrate Early Learning Matters Week – 17 to 21 October 2022.
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
Early Learning Matters Week is back for its fifth, fabulous year and this national event is something you’ll want to be a part of!
The Week is organised by Early Childhood Australia, and it’s a chance for parents, carers, educators and community leaders to come together and celebrate the importance of high-quality, play-based early learning, and the difference a profession makes.
The influence of this cannot be understated, because we know that high-quality early childhood education and care has a formative, and enduring, influence on young children’s development and wellbeing.
The first five years of life are incredibly important for their cognitive, social and emotional development, and high-quality early childhood education and care supports children to become keen, confident learners, with a bright future ahead of them.
Early Learning Matters Week is a great opportunity for you to learn more about all of this.
‘Learning Through Play’ is the theme of Early Learning Matters Week 2022, and you’re encouraged to step inside your early childhood education and care service and see what high-quality, play-based learning actually looks like, and the positive influence it has.
Your service may be holding a morning tea or another family-friendly event, and because you have a role in supporting your child’s play-based learning, it’s a great idea to read up on the topic as well.
This Early Childhood Australia blog post is an excellent introduction, because it describes ‘play,’ outlines the many benefits of it, and explains how educators incorporate play into the early learning day, with the help of parents.
This blog post about the learning outcomes you can expect is also helpful, and there are links to lots of different play-related resources on Early Childhood Australia’s Year of Play webpage, including easy-to-read infographics.
In your personal interactions and online readings, you’ll see that the early childhood profession is deeply committed to the children in its care (and to their future selves).
Educators do a wonderful job of supporting individual families and our whole society, and we hope you can find some time to celebrate Early Learning Matters Week, because early learning really does matter!
