Newsletter
Autumn/Winter 2013/14
Psycholudics
This is a term you may well have heard being used around the club, but perhaps it hasn’t quite registered with you. Psycholudics is a Learning Theory cantered on play. Put simply, this theory proposes that both children and adults alike, develop their physical and spiritual identity, their cultures and their understanding of their world around them through “play”
We all utilise playis to practice building social relationships, physical skills and mental reasoning, To put it another way, we learn our Life Skills via play.
Theplaycycle
The Psycholudics Theory is extended through study by breaking play down into its constituent parts: this becomes known as the Play Cycle and children will be “driven” to complete the cycle in order to gain the learning and developmental function of the play. The Play Drive is not visible in itself but its effects are. At Little Villagers we utilise the Psycholudics System and our Playworkers are constantly looking for evidence of the Play Drive in our children. Sometimes the children will be “driven” to play in a group. At other times it will be a solitary activity. This depends on what Life Skill the child is subconsciously developing.
The Playworkers are all trained on the Psycholudics System and they closely observe the children looking out for “Play Cues” – and invitation to join in the Play Activity. This can be as obvious as a
“… come and do this with me” or as Subtle as a facial expression or body language cue. The Playworkers know what they are looking for.
Without this “invitation” then an intervention by a Playworker would actually be a superimposing of their ideas onto the child’s play activity and hence would prevent the learning and development function from taking place. For this reason, our Playworkers are trained to hold back until an invitation is made. Of course our Playworkers also have a supervisory role to ensure the children remain safe, but their observations should not be mistaken for inactivity.
What makes Little Villagers such a good Childcare provider is the range and depth of play activities created for our children. This allows all of our children the opportunity to explore and develop the full range of their life skills at appropriate points in their developmental journey.
To learn more check out our website:
http://www.littlevillagers.org.uk/how-the-staff-get-involved-in-play.html
or try here http://www.ludemos.co.uk/members1.htm
If you prefer a book Playwork - Theory and Practice
by Fraser Brown (1 Nov 2002)
[Available on Amazon for £16.72]
Staff Update
Hollie Wilson will be joining us on a permanent basis, covering the After-School Service and Holiday Clubs You will no doubt have met her around the club already as she started with us back in the Summer on a temporary basis.
Trish Atkins will be doing Breakfast,,
After-School and Holiday Clubs for us, ably covering Lesley’s Maternity Leave.
We welcome a new Clerical Administrator to the team because after two years in post Alison is leaving us to take up a college place. Good Luck Alison.
Our new Administrator is Sharon Wilkinson. We hope for a smooth transition with Invoicing but should you experience any problems please get in touch quickly and we will resolve them.
Christmas Panto
Once again this year Little Villagers will be taking a group to the Pantomime at Edinburgh King’s Theatre.
This year’s we will be taking the second star on the right to visit Neverland and see a performance of Peter Pan, complete with crocodiles, lost boys, fairies and pirates.
The usual cast is back: the versatile Alan Stewart; the hilarious Andy Gray [“Am no very wellll”] and arch-villain Grant Stott {Boooo Hisss}. They always put on a great show. This is a very popular outing every year and of course provided at no additional cost to parents
This year the Panto Outing will be on Friday 13th of December. We will have over 40 kids attending again this year. Watch out for message nearer to the time detailing drop off/pick up etc.
5 Min. Interview
M Who are you? – Hi I ‘m Drew McLellan the Chair of Little Villagers Management Committee.
M How did you get here?.- By default really. If you keep running off at the mouth, eventually someone expects you to step up to the plate.
M Where are you going? - Hoping to go all the way to a 6 out of 6 Care Inspectorate Report next time around.
M What was your first ever job? – Delivering Coupons for Cancer Research Charity
M What would your superpower be? – Unquenchable energy – to match my children
M Tell us an interesting fact about yourself – I once flew with the Red Arrows!
Annual General Meeting & Plea for New Committee Members
This year our AGM will be held on Thursdays 7th of November at 7:30 p.m. Little Villagers belongs to us all. It is our cub and the Management Committee volunteer their time to ensure that all the necessary business is taken care of; Staff Recruitment; Paying Wages; Ensuring Standards are Adhered to etc. The Committee numbers are now as low as they can go and we really need new members to join to enable us to continue the service. We schedule about 10 meetings a year and we do not expect a 100% attendance rate – Little Villagers is a Child Care Service for Working Parents so by our very nature we are all busy parents. All we ask though is for a little of your time to ensure we remain as successful as we have been up to this point..