Helpful Articles For Educators and Parents & Carers

How to work with your child’s setting to help support their learning at home

We all experience some kind of parent guilt. We ask ourselves questions like ‘Am I doing enough for Maximus at school?‘ ‘Am I explaining Priya’s phonics correctly?’ ‘Do I know enough about school?’ Tapestry allows you to view the learning targets met after the teacher has posted an observation. For...

5 Top Tips to help parents add their own observations to Tapestry

How not to be afraid of adding to your child’s journal As a parent, do we get that that Friday Feeling that the world seems to thrive on at 5:00 pm every week? I mean don’t get me wrong, who wouldn’t love a 9am kick off on a Saturday morning...

How do parents like to use Tapestry- what do they get out of it?

We’re in 2019. Your 3/4-year-old is more tech-savvy than you. True or false? Answers on a postcard to Boris, ET, Google whoever you like. But let’s take a minute here. Let’s look at the bigger picture. We’re hosting the next generation of turbo-powered IT literate little people and we’re still sitting...

The Educational Leader Role (4)

Driving Critical Reflection- The term ‘critical reflection’ appears repeatedly throughout the National Quality Standard (ACECQA, 2017) and yet, was something we rarely spoke about prior to its initial release in 2011. It is a term which scares many educators, and for which there is a general lack of understanding. However,...

The Educational Leader Role (3)

Meaningful assessment of the curriculum- The Educational Leader (EL) is something which is relatively new, only being a defined role since the introduction of the 2011 Education and Care National Regulations. However, it was not uncommon even prior to 2011, for services to have one educator who would step up...

Mentoring for Quality Improvement

In my work as an early childhood consultant I visit many services throughout Australia and it is obvious to me that, as the Guide to the National Quality Standard (NQS) states, ‘there is a strong link between leadership and improved outcomes for children.’ It is always inspiring to see effective...

The Making of Australia’s Own Forest School Leader Tribe

Forest School Learning Initiative in Australia Why is a British Forest School training company coming to Queensland, Australia? Although there are amazing examples of good practice in Outdoor Learning in Queensland, Forest School training has proved to enable Early Childhood Educators and Teachers to have a model of practice. Our...

The Educational Leader Role (2)

Constructing meaningful philosophy: The Educational Leader role is an interesting one in the early childhood sector, as it is still relatively undefined. For this reason, there are many questions surrounding the responsibilities of the role, and one such question is often that of philosophy. Philosophies are something we have also...

Tapestry Australia

We are excited to announce our new website for Tapestry Australia! Over the last year we have had two Tapestry representatives living and working in Australia, talking to and learning from early years specialists and educators. Our developers have adapted the tried and tested features of Tapestry to meet the...

All About Charlotte: part 2

The Weapon of Mass Destruction- Mobile and Dangerous: Now that Charlotte is one, she has given up playing with her toys. I arrange them invitingly on a little play mat, but she stalks off with as much dignity as a girl who has only just learned to walk can muster,...

All About Charlotte : celebrating the first year of development

She’s Got the Look! I am always taken by surprise at how a newborn baby engages with the world around them. I have three children, and each of them has begun their journey as a social being in their own way from the moment they were born; one with a...

The Educational Leader Role (1)

Do we place enough value on the responsibility the role has in the delivery of quality educational programs? In Australia early childhood standards and regulations have established the requirement for every service to delegate an ‘Educational Leader’. The Education and Care National Regulations 2011 (Reg118) don’t give a lot of...

Incorporating aspects of Montessori into your setting

Many years ago, when our children were small, my husband and I decided to emigrate to Australia. At that time there was a demand for Montessori teachers and during the interview at Australia House the officer made a humorous comment saying “Montessori? Is that some type of disease or something?”...

Positive Behaviour Management

What is “good behaviour”? What does good behaviour look like in your setting? Can you describe the behaviour that you would like to see? We are often reactive to behaviour, dealing with instances of unwanted behaviour as they arise, but this article will attempt to focus on creating an environment...

Putting nature back into play

In 1984, psychologist Roger Ulrich published a curious finding; patients recovering in hospital rooms that afforded a view of green spaces, got better quicker and with less intervention, than those confined to a room facing bricks and mortar. Since that time, researchers from a diverse range of professions have empirically demonstrated the healing effect...

Sustainable practices in early childhood settings: water awareness

Early childhood educators who support children to appreciate and care for the world’s natural environment are fulfilling the goals to demonstrate respect for the environment and develop understanding of the significance of the world’s environment for the children. The state of the world’s environment is frequently in the global news...

What can having an eye test tell you about critical reflection?

Are there two scarier words in early education than “critical reflection”? We know from Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) data that it’s the element of the National Quality Standard (NQS) that is most likely to be “Not Met” during Assessment and R Checks. In talking with educators...