By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. I love my chosen profession. The emotion is deep and embedded. While it was not my original intention to become an early childhood educator, I am so proud to be one now and I have never regretted the decision. Even though I have been an early childhood educator since … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. It was a year or two ago that I received a message from a Facebook friend asking me whether I had heard of “hygge”. Pronounced hue-guh hygge describes a quality of coziness that makes a person feel content and comfortable. It originates from Denmark and is not specific to the … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. I use this blog to share reflections and musings about the practice of early childhood education. In a recent post, The Broken Circle: Rethinking the Practice of Circles in Early Learning I wrote about a topic that fascinated me as a beginning teacher. Currently, circles continue to spiral in and out … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. When I taught introductory early childhood education courses, I presented developmental domains by raising my hand. One by one, I would count down the big five, cognitive, social, emotional, language and physical which I would divide into gross and fine motor. Lately, I have been wondering about other domains … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. Recently I experienced the power of place when I spent the weekend in Pennsylvania at Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC). I was invited by LCCC’s Teacher Education program to do a morning and afternoon workshop featuring loose parts to help launch its 32nd annual celebration of the Week of … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. I have written about early childhood education basics such as blocks, art and dramatic play before. By basics I mean that these are experiences that are essential and should be commonplace in every early learning environment both indoors and outdoors. By no means though, are these experiences simple. Rather, … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. It was in 2015 that the York Region Nature Collaborative offered the first Rhythm of Learning in Nature which is an opportunity for like-minded educators to come together to experience nature in dialogue with the Reggio Emilia Approach and influenced by forest school practices and Indigenous ways of knowing. … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE and Cindy Green, BSc, RECE. We have written about our long-standing relationship in previous posts and how we connected when we were working at the same community college, teaching early childhood education, many moons ago! We became critical friends, before we knew the term. In our context, we were pedagogical … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed. D, RECE. and Rosalba Bortolotti, RECE. What does it mean to be responsive? The dictionary defines responsiveness as acting quickly and positively. We often speak of responsive relationships in early childhood education. Our province’s early learning framework, Early Learning for Every Child Today was based on principles that included Principle 6: Knowledgeable, responsive, … Continue reading
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. When I began the journey to learn and understand emergent curriculum, I would not have believed that 20 years later, I would still be reflecting and wondering. Now, I know that I can never arrive at a place where I can say that I know everything that there is to … Continue reading
Technology Rich Inquiry Based Research 