Where Next for Growing Together?

2020 has been a mixed year for many people, a year full of challenges, disappointments and uneasiness; but it has also been a time for communities and people to come together. To support one another, talk to our neighbours, be good Samaritans in the course of a pandemic. 2020 will certainly be a year to be remembered, and it is okay to feel a sense of loss and annoyance for events within the past year. However, I want to reflect on some of the positives as a company; we launched our online early years training in August 2020 and what an incredible success it has been. (You can click here to view events for 2021). We got an allotment and connected with nature as directors together. And we also launched an incredible Parent and Child Nature Group in Brakey Woods in Hoxne.

I look back at how our new little company has grown and developed in the last year and it makes me excited to continue to develop, grow and see what is to come in the next year. We have some exciting visions and plans; including launching more online early years training events and we have several new events already planned for January and February 2021. Including the following:

·         Tools for Evaluating Practise

·         Supporting Children’s Listening, Attention and Understanding

·         Supporting Children with English as an Additional Language

·         Using Observations for Planning

·         Taking Phase One Phonics Outdoors

·         Bringing Mathematics Outdoors in the Early Years

We have developed these webinars alongside the questions, feedback and discussions we have had with practitioner over the past few months and are super excited that we are able to expand and offer more online early years training in the new year. In addition, of course to the ones we have already been running!

We also run our first ever Early Years Practitioners Virtual Conference, an event that was completely online for us to connect as an early year’s community. It was an amazing day and we have received such incredible feedback; such as “Fantastic opportunity to meet with other EY professionals and gather ideas to improve practice in a range of areas.” Where attendees also responded with saying they considered the event to be good value for money, we are so happy to facilitate this and cannot wait to run more virtual conferences in the new year, including:

·         Virtual Conference Laying the Foundations for Reading and Writing – 2nd January 2021 (booking available by clicking here)

·         Early Years Practitioners Virtual Conference – Easter 2021

·         Early Years Leaders Virtual Conference – Summer 2021

·         Early Years Practitioners Virtual Conference – Autumn 2021.

As a company we are passionate about supporting children and practitioners to develop a connection with nature, with endless benefits to our health and well-being. We will be continuing our Monday morning Brakey Wood Parent and Child Nature Group and hope by the summer to be able to run an afternoon group too. We can see the demand and importance for these events for parents and children to connect with nature but also one another outside, especially in the light of everything we have experienced in the past year. We also are excited to continue with our allotment journey as directors, to share this progress and transformation with you and learn together as we connect with each other in a different way and hopefully inspire you to connect as well.

We are even thinking about launching an early years Eco-Warrior programme, where you can have access to videos, resources and materials to help teach our very young children about the importance of looking after the natural world around us. We believe as a company that children are the future and we need to invest in them, in order to support their learning in looking after the environment and world around us.

On the 31st January 2021 we are also launching our staff meeting series, which is 20 short videos (ranging from 5 to 20 minutes) on different topics with accompanying resources to do a follow up activity or discussion. This is designed to help you introduce continuous professional development into your staff meetings without having to worry about time to get them ready. We are really excited to be launching this and have nearly finished recording.

We cannot wait for 2021 to start we are sure it is going to be an amazing year full of new opportunities!

By Pauline Milsted (Director of Growing Together)

Our Journey into Early Years Online Training

In August 2020 Growing Together developing early years launched our first ever early years online training. Our first event was our webinar ‘Childhood Trauma and Covid-19’. I was filled with nervousness as I logged onto the online webinar platform to do my first ever early years online training. After many hours of preparation, reading and more importantly practise and talking the topic through with anyone that would listen to me. Apologies to all of those friends who are not early years focused!

Early years online training was a completely different experience to my previous training I have delivered, which has been face to face and you can read peoples cues of engagement and easily get that interaction. For many of my first webinars, I felt like I was just chatting away to myself as I could not see anyone on the other side until we stopped to do activities; this was a new and strange feeling for myself.

I was so excited to receive some amazing reviews from our first series of webinars, which gave me the confidence to keep going. Susan and I are so excited by how much this early years online training has grown and developed and we really appreciate all of the feedback we have received as we continue to develop our webinars series and support professionals working in the early years sectors.

It is absolutely crazy to think that we now offer a range of early years online training as we are continuously releasing new webinars. Did you know since that very first webinar in the beginning of August 2020 we have run an amazing 58 webinars?! Even more incredible is that we have many more planned for the new year! You can check them out here by clicking on our link to our online training on the website.

In a year that has been very challenging for everyone around the world, as we social distance, lock down and spend more time on our own. This has really opened up a world for online training, and although we miss the opportunity of the physical coming together of training and having a chat over a cup of coffee or tea. We have seen the power and value of the early year’s community coming together online in our webinars, people pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and turning the videos or microphones on. Learning a new way to work, share ideas and connect with one another. What an amazing privilege we have had as a company to bring professionals across the early year’s community together in our online training.

We have spoken to people from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Omen, Malta, India, Dubia, Australia, Finland, America and China, just to name a few places. Wow, what an incredible opportunity we have had to bring people together who have a passion and care for early years through our online training all over the world. We would just like to take the opportunity to thank you for being a part of this online training journey with us. We can’t wait to continue to develop our online training for the early years more.