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In a very special episode, to mark the very special milestone of our 100 episode, we were delighted to have a wide-ranging conversation with Wendy Lee. Wendy is the Director of the Educational Leadership Project in New Zealand.  Wendy discussed the importance of relationships, values, celebrating children's learning journeys and importance of ensuring childhood is valued as a right by policy makers and educators. 

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In this week’s episode of Early Childhood Ireland’s podcast Taking Part in TIME, we hear from Claire Walsh and Marsela Vangjeli, both from The Children’s Village in Balbriggan. They chat about the Practitioner Inquiry project they worked on when they took part in the TIME CPD programme earlier this year and the impact this had on their setting. The TIME CPD programme and the new member resource, now available on the Early Childhood Ireland Learning Hub was funded by the RTÉ Toy Show Appeal. 

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Members and regular listeners know that the work of Early Childhood Ireland is influenced and inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. In April of this year, we were saddened to learn of the death of Carla Rinaldi, who was Honorary President of Reggio Children and the Centro Loris Malaguzzi. To pay tribute to this shining light and examine some of the ways in which she has influenced the Early Years and School Age Care sector in Ireland we are delighted to be joined by Milica Atanackovic, Acting Director of Membership, Excellence and Learning at Early Childhood Ireland. 

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We were delighted to chat with Dr Aaron Bradbury from Nottingham Trent University in the UK. Aaron recently edited a document called Play Matters and in this special conversation to mark International Day of Play we discuss the joy of play, slow relational pedagogy and advocating for play.  As Aaron says, the possibilities that come from play are endless! 

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Early Childhood Ireland is delighted to introduce a brand new member CPD resource called TIME: Thriving through Interactions and Meaningful Engagements. In this episode we discuss the programme with Dr Christina Egan Marnell, from Early Childhood Ireland. We chat about how it was developed, how will support educators to reflect on and develop their engagements with children. The development of the CPD programme and resource was supported by the RTE Toy Show Appeal. Early Childhood Ireland members can access the course here

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What does consulting with children mean, how do we do this? In this episode Prof Deirdre Horgan from University College Cork takes us through her work with Hub na nÓg developing the recently published toolkit to support consulting with children. She discusses how so much consultation goes on with children everyday and gives ideas on how we can recognise this and capture it. 

You can find the toolkit referred to here  https://hubnanog.ie/resources/toolkit-guidance/?_sft_post_tag=toolkits  

If you would like to hear the earlier episode about the Children's Participation framework with Prof. Laura Lundy and Anne O'Donnell, you will find it here  https://earlychildhoodirelandpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1541473/episodes/9314091-exploring-the-national-framework-for-children-and-young-people-s-participation-in-decision-making-with-prof-laura-lundy-and-anne-o-donnell

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This week we talk to Valerie Gaynor, Manager of Creative Kids and Co in Dublin, who participated in the NCCA's Updating Aistear Development Group about her experiences of the process. She also discusses how the updated Aistear is impacting on practice in her setting.    

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Today, 22 April is World Earth Day. To mark this important day we were delighted to chat about the enhanced focus on Sustainability in the Updated Aistear, with Dr Marlene McCormack, from Dublin City University. In this episode Marlene discusses how values play a role in attitudes to sustainability, with a mindset of caring at it's heart. She gives practical ideas on how we can support children and families to think of sustainability and ecology. 

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This week we chat with Grahame Brown, Account Director at Arachas Insurance. Grahame takes us through what a Group Insurance scheme is and outlines the benefits contained in the Early Childhood Ireland scheme which is underwritten by Allianz and administered by Arachas.  

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In a new series of Early Childhood Ireland's podcast, we are exploring the recently Updated Aistear. In this episode, Fiona Kelleher, from Early Childhood Ireland tells us about the consultation process carried out with babies, toddlers and young children as part of the updating process. She discusses some key findings and shows how these findings influenced the updated Principles of Aistear. 

The reports Fiona mentioned on the Consultations with babies, toddlers and young children can be read here. 

Phase one 

Phase two  

These consultations were conducted by Early Childhood Ireland, Maynooth University and Stranmillis University College, on behalf of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.