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Child Side Playgroup & School

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25.01.2022 "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." Milton Berle."If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." Milton Berle.

25.01.2022 At Child Side our days are intentionally structured to make the most of children's ideas (pancakes today), engage with learning and practising skills such as with our letter dough stamps (one of our skill builders), as well as to create time and space literally for children to watch the paint dry (on our new eco friendly water paint boards saving reams of paper whilst still enabling young children to make meaningful marks and pictures to their hearts content.) We also perfect...ed our pancake skills practising first in our playdough bakery. Children are part of everything right from the beginning including making the playdough. At Child Side we teach children to 'nurture their soil and how to grow their own flowers' rather than just being handed a pretty bunch of flowers (worksheets) prepared by adults with the learning and joy removed from being part of the process. Life replaces worksheets at Child Side. Process supports and validates the final product. Conversation and real life, real time feedback replaces ticked boxes and stickers.... See more

24.01.2022 Sir Ken Robinson: 4/3/1950 - 21/8/2020, your legacy will live on through Child Side School and Playgroup: "I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new concept of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way we strip-mined the earth for a particular commodity. We have to rethink the fundamental principles in which we are educating our children. At Child S...ide School, thanks to people like you Ken, we not only rethought the fundamental principles around education, we have reframed the purpose of school as an human ecosystem and put it all into action since 2002. We are eternally grateful for the research and leadership from the fine mind of Sir Ken Robinson who had the courage, passion and knowledge to speak out and speak up. This has supported and validated our own courage, passion and knowledge to build our school to encapsulate the richness of human capacity and after 18 years we have the experience to know this wisdom is valid and life changing. In our rapidly altered world, we will continue to build upon and share this to give other practitioners the courage, knowledge and passion to walk the talk. See more

23.01.2022 Keeping informed is the backbone of what we do at Child Side School. The world is our curriculum and our living books operate in the real world beyond separate disciplines and straight line thinking. Our new daily lives currently depend upon every single discipline, agency, work place, organisation, community, family, individual to think and act together contributing millions of pieces of the jigsaw that will transform our new ways of living. This pandemic is proving we canno...t just rely on a single source such as government or health or science or finance... to manage or solve this latest disruption. Child Side School is well placed with navigating this incredible turn around in the whole fabric of our lives rocked by unsustainable practices, climate change, natural disasters, this pandemic, economic collapse and social reconstruction. Our work is formed and informed around far more than education as a single entity. View the complexity, depth and breadth of one of our most significant, behind the scenes living book, Dr Deborah O'Connell, who has been a reference point since the school's inception and whose work is helping us lead in this time of massive disruption. We are forever seeking, learning, growing so new generations can follow our lead along the same pathways of expansive thinking and interdisciplinary knowledge and processes. "No human is an island" and neither is any job, career, livelihood, sport, hobby, crisis, solution, enterprise, school, neighbourhood... https://people.csiro.au/O/D/Deborah-OConnell

23.01.2022 Many parents across all sectors of education are confused and uncertain about learning from home. This is not home schooling nor distance education, this is working together in a rapidly changed circumstance, being the adults, being creative, finding out what really matters. Learning how to learn, having frequent conversations, sharing, negotiating, compromising, focusing on resetting the world and becoming better, not bitter... are things of value that children can learn anywhere through anyone. Watch this 8 minute clip from Gabbie Stroud on Q and A highlights to know that you have 'got this'! https://iview.abc.net.au/show/q-a-highlights

22.01.2022 Some of the silver linings through this health crisis include the gifts of time and the pursuit of personal health and wellbeing. All of a sudden we could not outsource our worries, our health, our wellbeing and our interests. We have all, as individuals (and as parents), needed to step up to take care of ourselves and take personal responsibility to engage ourselves (and our own families if we are lucky enough to have family at home), as everyone else is in the same position... or worse off. All of a sudden, we couldn't rely on other people or places to keep ourselves or our families engaged. We had/have swathes of time to really hang out with ourselves and families and take the opportunity to do things we never had the time or motivation to do on top of daily work and living. Child Side children, especially our young adolescents, have had years of exposure and experience around identifying their own strengths, interests and passions through their Big Picture learning through interest processes and projects and through Voice and Choice challenges and interests. These paintings are done by a footy, sport mad young adolescent, who also has some of his own cattle, is fascinated by diesel mechanics and has been an artist since early childhood. Extra-ordinary amounts of down time suddenly available to him resulted in painting birthday paintings for friends. Other children have stepped up helping out, branching out, dipping into new hobbies or exploring old ones, exploring where they live... wisely grabbing hold of this gift of extra time, with family support. Parents, staff and children have all got to know themselves and each other in a different light. May we all return richer and holding onto the slower movement of life, helping keep this as part of our new normal. See more

22.01.2022 Research and experience shows the greatest levels of success are supported by commitment and investment of time, interest and energy, especially when the going gets tough, rather than walking away and moving on. To make their world a better place, children need their grown ups to commit for them and with them and to help them commit and invest in their own lives and learning. At Child Side we support children to understand that the "grass is not greener on the other side, it... is greener where you water it", it is greener where you invest your time, energy, care and take the time and effort to grow interest around where you are and who you are with. Nothing comes without effort. Child Side is a place of commitment and effort. It is not a place to drop children off everyday and cross your fingers they will leave as "confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners and active and informed members of the community". (These are the education goals for all young Australians declared at The Alice Springs Education Declaration Feb 2020: Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment.) We commit to doing things differently so that we can commit to these goals; we commit to the conditions for learning that enable these goals for all children whose parents commit too. Together we commit to making a difference. Together we commit to bringing life, creativity and colour to educating children. See more

22.01.2022 Kudos to all those individuals, families, businesses, communities, schools and not for profit organisations for thinking on their feet and rising to constantly and radically changing circumstances. We encourage everyone to seek out, support and share COVID19 adaptive thinkers and those who are focusing on becoming better not bitter. The Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre is officially launching live streaming this week. Over 40 business owners, organisations and community lead...ers have worked with the Bunbury Geographe Economic Alliance to set up a collective Smart HUB to help the South West get 'fit for purpose' solutions as a cooperative initiative. 'Fit for purpose' is a radical departure from 'across the board' policies, regulations and protocols which often miss the mark and end up with frustration, resignation and futility across all sides, despite best intentions. Think about the Eastern states bush fire funding relief. Think about all the Royal Commissions and lists of recommendations. We want our young people to identify things and ways of doing better, not stuck feeling bitter. We shall all have to re-imagine how to do things and this will take a committed collective groundswell to listen to our young people, our elders, our scientists, our artists, our inventors, our gardeners, farmers, our first Australians, our entrepreneurs, our conservationists, our educators, our own health and well being responsibilities and act upon creative, critical and alternative thinking. Watch the Australian documentary 2040, listen to the people around you, find extraordinary people, those not willing just to get back in line, and see the potential in front of us. We will now all have to support our communities, schools, businesses, governments to create a new 2021, 2030 and 2040 and not just rush to return to the familiar. We need to love where we live and step up and step out taking our young people along with us side by side. See more

21.01.2022 Our beautiful school breathes quietly without the voices of its children, staff and families. However, we are all uncommonly well prepared to learn from school, home or anywhere life requires us to. If ever resilience was required, this is the time to dig deep and reap what we have sewn, a creative, kind and considerate community. We know how to invest in the long term for the sake of our children. We are guided by the children, they know what to do and how to go about it at home. They deserve our respect and graciousness whilst we all navigate unchartered territory together. Morning Meeting in our Early Childhood Cluster has been a quiet affair... We all so miss the children!!!

21.01.2022 Child Side Playgroup and School is 'small by design' and our design is around being and staying personal and personable. We are a value-based enterprise around what matters to us as part of our 'origin' story, around which our whole design is based, since our establishment in 2002. This is what matters to us: equal dignity regardless of age and 'perceived hierarchy', the real voices of children living noisy and active authentic childhoods, real connection between home and sch...ool, children represented by their personal stories not statistics, curiosity, engagement, conversations, community, real life as the driver of education not isolated curriculum and scores. We share our values through the images we share, the stories we exchange, the way we interact and communicate. Each photo symbolises a world of personal meaning... so that we can become curious about each other's real stories and make a real difference beyond school. We know that childhood matters well into adulthood too. See more

20.01.2022 And so ends the most bizarre and unexpected term of any of our lives thus far... Whilst our work, school and home lives were turned inside out and upside down we still managed to seek happiness where we allocated our attention to what we still have and still can do with the benefit of time in our personal lives. It is what we choose to notice and how we choose to respond that will keep us sane. Living and working in Bunbury and the South West of WA has never been so loved as it is now during these past few months. Here is to all our staff, children, families and wider community finding gifts within our own spaces over the holidays at home and into next term... Stay strong and healthy everyone.

20.01.2022 "One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things". Charlie Mackesy While most of us would just walk over grass clippings or rake them up, today one of our YACs (young adolescents) spontaneously crouched down and created this... It reminds us of how differently we all see the same things. It reminds us of how we can choose to react or respond to the ordinary in our everyday lives. Being in a community of children helps us see the world differently... should we choose to open our eyes, ears and minds beyond what we think we should see.

19.01.2022 May we all read our children this bedtime story for generations to come. Child Side salutes those who share their passion and engage others to think and feel profoundly... We will start to share this at our Christmas spiral each year so that this bedtime story never goes away. https://youtu.be/Nw5KQMXDiM4

19.01.2022 Experiential learning: out and about across Bunbury today... Weeks of planning, researching, map reading and map making, wondering and speculating together, were put into action through experiencing The Big Bunbury Walk. Our approach to 'Education as Everyone's Business' was in action once again today, with families and children walking and talking side by side, with the world as our wall-less classroom and families as our paperless textbooks...

18.01.2022 Timely reminder to enact a resilience response as opposed to a panic reaction to current events. Children are watching us adults.Timely reminder to enact a resilience response as opposed to a panic reaction to current events. Children are watching us adults.

18.01.2022 "Contemporary life should be largely about gratitude...we're heirs of plenty that most of us did absolutely nothing to earn" ~ Ben Stein. 'Gratitude is about re-framing daily life; changing one's focus from what is lacking or detrimental instead to the awareness what one already has and has opportunity to do, noticing what does work and what one has learned or how one benefited, even if the catalyst is 'unwelcome or burdensome'. Gratitude is a turning of the mind, it is abou...t re-framing ways to see the world and re-framing ways of choosing how to live with whatever has happened'. Robert Emmons. At Child Side School we are grateful for our work around children that helps us personally and professionally to all strive towards making our world a better place; not only for the children and ourselves but for the invisible 'others' now and in generations to come. We are grateful to those who have come before us and to those who have walked beside us, like the great Brian Edward Kennedy, our Bruno, our coach Kennedy, whose stories, wisdom, memories, jokes and actions (and much of our furniture at school) will live on beyond his time. Bunbury is better because of Brian. Child Side School is better because of Brian. We are heirs to an abundance of generosity and kindness through his actions. Thank you, dear friend of Child Side and my dear mentor... gone from us this week, but never forgotten. We are grateful you taught us not only to find the bright side of anything but to make the bright side ourselves. See more

17.01.2022 It takes time, effort, interest and energy for real communities to form and thrive. At Child Side School we have an uncommon commitment to community. Our commitment is demonstrated by daily preparing together shared lunches and conversation around tables, followed by shared clean up responsibilities with our YACs coming over to help the Kindies in ECC learn how to become 'crew' rather than passengers. Our MCC are back on their bikes for our regular weekly Cycle Skills Coaching sessions, refreshing how to be considerate road users and follow shared rules, apply group safety and etiquette. Our monthly Family Enterprise Stalls and YAC Shack Cafe will be on again this Thursday, building social connectivity and other real life skills.

16.01.2022 "Is your glass half empty or half full? I think I am grateful to have a glass." Charlie Mackesy."Is your glass half empty or half full? I think I am grateful to have a glass." Charlie Mackesy.

15.01.2022 Lead by example... Child Side Staff and Families 'walk the talk' by making the effort to give back, or pay it forwards, to other community groups, community events, to individuals, family and friends by volunteering their time, skills, passions or even going outside of their comfort zones to volunteer at large sporting events, such as the Biggest Cycling 3 day community cycling event, TOMR, with close to 800 riders from elite to recreational catered for. Annually around 60 vo...lunteers support this event before, during and after the 3 day extravaganza, including many family members. The TOMR is just done and dusted for another year, with many of the volunteer crew returning year after year due to great, caring, passionate, highly skilled organisers and fantastic camaraderie plus the wonderful feeling of being part of something bigger than one's own daily life and familiar circle of events. It is a great feeling to give opportunity to others and we hope our Child Side children organically take this spirit of volunteering onwards. Volunteering is the life blood of community, people are the heart and soul behind any event or organisation and are the reason so many worthwhile things happen, especially community sport and the creative arts. So thanks to all those inspiring people out there who give and go beyond for others... Volunteering is rather like a blue print for parenting, so very worthwhile without the need for glory.

15.01.2022 The things we value and cherish should inform us as individuals, as communities, as work places, as states, nations and as generational elders to act on protecting and enhancing our values. Please read my sister's article, Dr Deborah O'Connell, published yesterday. Her work and significant global contacts inform our work at Child Side School helping us articulate and share our values with our children immersed in the real world. We work through personal connections to keep it... real, alive and relatable to children. They know we care because it takes effort to seek, share, communicate and teach through conversations, real stories and human connection. We challenge our children to grow, we express care for them and for our work and values, we constantly seek to expand their possibilities... supported through real people and real lives. We help children see, hear, feel and connect with stories, not just stats and facts. We use real photos to describe the real things we value. https://ecos.csiro.au/deconstructing-disasters-taking-stoc/

14.01.2022 Preparing for experiences some Australians have lived through and potentially will live with, helps create different mindsets, building essential levels of resilience. My sister, Dr. Deborah O'Connell and fellow CSIRO work, has informed this and 'Big Weather' which can be viewed on the ABC. We encourage communities and families to start these conversations and help give children hope that adults are being proactive and informed. This helps counter the effects of just seeing and hearing about these events through the media This may only seem like one small step forward, but collectively it is one giant leap for humankind... Have a read of the blog for starters. https://blog.csiro.au/mt-resilience-augmented-reality/

14.01.2022 As the sun sets on the Child Side 'learning at home' period, we can certainly count our blessings and have gratitude for good fortune and proactive national and state decision making and collective action to flatten the curve. However, just like the smoke from the Australian bushfires (see NASA image) which circumnavigated the globe, the collective grief of the world for loved ones lost in the most isolating of times circumnavigates the globe reminding us all to stay conscious of 'what really matters'. May parents and educators across education sectors everywhere, hold onto lessons learned and together make changes to de-clutter education and stay connected.

13.01.2022 We are decorating our Christmas tree at home keeping family visible, this being the first Christmas without Nana (1938-2020). For many of our Child Side Staff and families this is the first Christmas without access to family or key loved ones. Our simple Christmas Spiral gathering last night at Child Side School, on our newly named Brian Kennedy Playing Field (1934-2020), connected each family through school, making visible children's most essential communities: family and sc...hool. These are fundamentally the 2 critical communities in any child's life that teach, bind, bond and care across ages and generations and sustain them across life. Our Christmas spiral symbolises our connection through community. We thank each family for their trust by choosing us to help them raise their children WELL, knowing that we have the enormous capacity to care before and beyond K-10. We live and work with Genevieve Ternents (1977-2017) legacy: "No one said life would be easy, they just said it would be worth it". Our Child Side community is worth the commitment. Our gratitude cup is overflowing because of our community. Rest well, play well and live well....so we all can continue all our profound work into the next decade.

12.01.2022 " I didn't know a thing about what was coming our way, how our family's life would unfold - whether everything would go well or go poorly, or whether like most people, we'd get a solid mix of both. My job was just to make sure my children were ready for it." Michelle Obama: Becoming. Education cannot predetermine an outcome for children. What we want for our children can only be described, not prescribed. Our roles as parents and educators are to help children unscramble th...e narratives of the world and help them build their own narrative within this frame. At Child Side School we make time to open, dissect and reflect upon the content, context and narratives inside the world's Pandora's Box. COVID and the abuse of power, position and status have blown open Pandora's Box, creating further opportunities for growth, change and personal ownership over one's own values, stories and actions. We expect children to understand, own and grow their personal narrative and to recognise that every single person has an impact and matters. They have to make themselves visible in their own life narrative, at home, at school, in their communities and in the world. No one else will see them if they don't see and hear themselves.They all have a part to play to dismantle harmful narratives and co-construct different narratives and perspectives. We take children seriously and help them find ways to reduce blame and complacency. We give them opportunities to listen differently to others and articulate with their own voices, not just repeating the voices of history, media sound bites or fleeting social commentary. Everyone looks out into the world from their own window frame and sees it differently based around their own narrative. This is the view from a Melbourne Quarantine hotel window... plenty of time to consider one's own narrative and hopefully COVID has given everyone the time to consider their own. It is so great to be back at school; long live our community and the rich, diverse tapestry of stories.

12.01.2022 At Child Side School we don't base our worth on how others treat us but instead we measure ourselves on how we treat others. The relationships we foster are not around friendships and compatibility but around being able to work alongside others, to be useful and approachable. Nowhere in adult life is anyone at their place of work, neighbourhood, sporting team or recreational club just because their friends are there or are the same age as ourselves. At Child Side School we ac...tively value and teach relationship (not friendship) skills which rely upon self acceptance and self worth as the starting points on which to build strong working relationships with others like you and those not like you. We offer the external assets (the supports, opportunities, adult caring relationships, consistent boundaries and positive expectations) to support the long term process for children to build their own personal internal assets (positive self identity, self respect, commitment to learning and commitment to being part of a community, social competencies including willingness to find positive ways to work through hardships, adversity, conflict, rejection and accept diversity.) We can do this through our deliberate "small by design" approach and our intentional real life structures around multi-aged groupings, consistent with what children experience outside of school within their own families, neighbourhoods and eventually their work places (which may even be based in the home). In this global COVID era we are all experiencing less choice and flexibility around our own preferences, instead the need is focusing on adapting to who and what is around us, and often that is our own families and local neighbourhoods to sustain us. Well developed internal assets sustain us when external assets may no longer be what we are used to. These are the keys to resilience and hope...

12.01.2022 It is still a personal choice for us all how we cope with what is both in an beyond our control. Despair never improved anythingIt is still a personal choice for us all how we cope with what is both in an beyond our control. Despair never improved anything

12.01.2022 This is what matters at Child Side Playgroup and School. This is communication at its clearest and finest. We stand up and raise our voices to share the work of others like this who can articulate and illustrate our exact endeavour and encapsulate our continued pathway forward. Parenting and education are the most powerful bases to build upon. Change starts at home and in school. May we all take the time to reflect on what really matters during this time of sheltering and nesting in our most beautiful part of the world. So during the next crisis and challenge that we as individuals, communities and humanity will face, our social and emotional intelligences and reasoning can temper the trauma. Please consider this in the rush to return to 'schooling', which can be quite different to 'learning'. https://m.facebook.com/story.php

11.01.2022 https://education-reimagined.org/paradigm-shift/ Child Side School K -10 and Playgroup (established 2002) has never viewed nor approached education as a domain separate from life. We see education as learning from, through and about life. Everything we do is congruent and aligned with the development of the goals for all young Australians, set out in the Alice Springs Declaration of Education, December 2019. Our organisation was created to shift the paradigm of how schooling... engaged with learning to enable these goals. Child Side School is "Education re-imagined", with the focus on re-imagining based around research, practice, successful and engaged children and adults. We are a contemporary school NOT an alternative school. We are designed around evidence-based research applied to practice. We are learning not only from other innovative schools and education approaches around the nation and world, but also through and from research and practice in science, health, engineering, agriculture, small business, manufacturing, circular economies, diverse cultures, sport, artisans, families... The main driver for our existence has been, and still is, around: changing the education paradigm how humans learn; working with "equal dignity" and keeping families connected NOT separated by school walls and school hours nor separated through any imbalance of power, trust or differences in knowledges and skillsets. Our K to 10 school is designed to keep children and families engaged, curious, creative, communicating, constructive and considerate whilst enabling children to build foundational skills, technical curriculum based skills and entrepreneurial skills and mindsets. Our school suits any and every child, it suits all children, as our focus is on life long learners. Our school works best for our aligned staff and families who support, engage and seek to understand contemporary school design based on learning research and practise and who strive to understand 'education re-imagined'. We are intentionally 'small by design' in order to develop real relationships so we can really: express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities of staff and children alike. (Search Institute: Relationships Framework)

11.01.2022 "Every baby's trajectory is different from the other babies and is incredibly variable." The documentary series 'Babies' reminds us all of the wonder around learning and growing. When will education expectation and practice catch up the science and parental knowledge and experience around individual development? Do parents ever wonder why all children in the same year level at school get taught, tested and graded on the same material, skills and concepts at the same time a...s each other and taught all in the same way and wonder whose needs does this approach serve best? Adults, bell curves and systems or children and society? Child Side School is powered by the knowledge and experience around childhood development which is one of the reasons why we intentionally operate in learning developmental clusters rather than year groups.

11.01.2022 The chasm between school and life is reduced when we asses what we value. At Child Side we continue to look at life as the curriculum design and children as the central resource. Thanks to the design, principles and practices of Big Picture Education, Reggio Emilia education, Expansive Education and the General Capabilities, Child Side School has access to a different landscape of thinking around education. We value our practice.

10.01.2022 Something interesting to speculate together and use as a springboard for a great deal of learning and thinking, for all of us who are now learning from home... This is a very rich springboard to encompass literacy, numeracy, critical and creative thinking, ethical thinking, social reasoning... This is a great example how to make global concepts manageable for us all, even for those of us without school aged children. https://youtu.be/A3nllBT9ACg

10.01.2022 A glorious day out on Koombana Bay, supporting local organisations like the Dolphin Discovery Centre, as part of our leaving school to learn approach. Rather than focusing on attending Career and Open Days our YAC (Young Adolescent Cluster Year 7-10s) embrace Big Picture Learning where the world is the real classroom and the opportunities to contribute constructively to the world are endless. Taking a walk around the bay and engaging in tours opens eyes and ideas to many ways of being productive, engaged and employable. Back at school comes the research and investigation around the roles and academic and social reasoning... What a way to grow up and be part of, not separate to, the world. We teach differently because we want real outcomes.

08.01.2022 Our Bountiful Backyard Kitchen Garden Programme provides for our daily shared lunches prepared by children as part of their daily community service skill builders. Along with skills and knowledge learnt through their Weekly Wednesday World Cafe and Board Games Gathering learning how to cooperate, collaborate and work together (and realising that not everything goes our way all the time or even some of the time, especially when luck and the weather is involved) our children's ...community is well placed to apply their increasing levels of social flexibility and mental agility to get on with life and learning whilst the world slows down. Child Side School acknowledges the difficult times and decisions having to be made on a global scale. We are confident that our children are well placed to accept and adapt, acting on behalf of the community good not just personal profit and loss. See more

07.01.2022 First day back at Playgroup for 2020 yesterday enjoying our beautiful nature inspired play space. Time spent exploring, investigating, remembering routines and nuturing relationships.

06.01.2022 Please watch Dr. Deborah O'Connell, a senior scientist at CSIRO. Her work is world reknown in many fields but here she has a short interview sharing her some of her journey. She is also my big sister. She is a living book for Child Siders and even the Early Childhood Cluster know our baboon story. Children always take more notice when there is a personal connection, hence our enormous success with using families and community as Living Books. It would be wonderful for more of us to record and share our own journeys to share with children. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=691098534763509&id=187196358487065

06.01.2022 Child Side School K - 10 is so very grateful to have the good fortune of a summer holiday where we could all regenerate and flourish. Our hearts are with all those school communities who face a very different start to the school year around Australia and China and indeed any other place around the world dealing with massive disruption. Child Side will resume "Business as unusual" tomorrow as we have done for the past 18 years, with relationships and resiliency as our top prio...rities. We are operating in unprecedented times, but our chosen way of working has always been providing a different way of teaching for a different way of learning to enable children to be themselves and consider their place in the changing world around them. Our children know about community and community is what is proving to be the shining light through all the devastation across Australia. Staff have been working long and hard to provide a welcoming environment in which to grow our potential... See more

06.01.2022 Child Side School is a place that welcomes children by the carload, not the coachload. We are 'small by design' to enable children and staff to flourish at school and beyond school. The long term value and purpose of school is to learn about yourself and how you can navigate complexity and fit yourself competently and confidently in the real world BEYOND school within your own families and communities. School does not last forever! We challenge how a traditional model of stan...dardised schooling according to fixed year levels can comprehensively enable children in the 21st Century to learn about themself in the real world or to genuinely gain useful competencies for entrepreneurship, employment, relationships, resilience, the ups and downs of personal, local, national and global living? Success at school or Uni does not necessarily translate to success beyond school. Success at school does not necessarily reflect a creative, confident, active childhood.14 years is a long time to be at school if you can't be yourself or be a real child or adolescent... At Child Side we have designed the whole structure based around the science of human development and the science and art of learning. We have designed the whole school, including our name, around our core focus: each and every child within a community of learning. We truly know every single child WELL. Our design and contemporary approach to transformational, learner-centred education means that ALL our children across K -10, can genuinely: explore, create, design, produce, evaluate, engage, converse, reason, express care, provide support, challenge their own growth, learn to share power and expand their possibilities daily. Our staff are professionals in the knowledge, skills and practice around contemporary learner -centred, transformational education. This means we genuinely 'walk the education talk', beyond the same words that all schools talk about. At Child Side School children are not 'standardised' nor defined by their enrolled year level. We intentionally design and structure the whole school around children K-10, across 3 clusters: ECC (Early Childhood Cluster), MCC (Middle Childhood Cluster), YAC (Young Adolescent Cluster) in line with the science of the characteristics of human development and our 90 + years of combined staff knowledge and experience as parents, educators and researchers from around the world. At Child Side School Communication, literacy, numeracy, ICT... are the floors for the children, not their ceiling. Everything is designed to bring out the best in each child, working on their strengths whilst challenging them to grow a wide range of necessary competencies along with growing their confidence by using these competencies in age appropriate and child-friendly meaningful ways.

06.01.2022 Child Siders in action! We are focusing the children's attention on valuing the learning through the ordinary and everyday experiences adults' engage in. Education at Child Side School is about learning to meaningfully function, produce, contribute and participate in life. The MCC and YACs (years 4 to 10) know that they are not just learning practical skills and knowledge whilst gardening and putting together furniture, they are really developing character strengths, which ar...e 'muscles' everyone has and only develop through constant use. These character strengths include grit, social intelligence, self-control and intellectual humility (they are not always right and there is always more to learn...) They are also working on developing their community service skills and applying their critical and creative thinking skills, personal management skills and their communication skills (Australian Curriculum General Capabilities). Some of our YACs (Young Adolescent Cluster: year 7 to 10) are working as internal interns in different aspects of the school, learning many different workplace skills such as OHS, workplace literacy and numeracy... in our supportive workplace culture.

05.01.2022 Healing the future: "Don't measure how valuable you are by the way you are treated." Charlie Mackesy.Healing the future: "Don't measure how valuable you are by the way you are treated." Charlie Mackesy.

05.01.2022 Child Side staff walking the talk and talking the walk! School is back tomorrow after our school development days refocusing on our priorities around personal and social health, well being and accountability in a group setting, along with our focus on communication and interactive skills. Playgroup returns next Tuesday 9:30am, along with the YAC Shack. Please bring own fruit to eat, not to share, and your own keep cup if purchasing from the YAC Shack.

04.01.2022 COVID-19 Response & Recovery Alliance South West Smart Hub https://southwestsmarthub.org.au/ A resource for any families to access or pass on to those you know who may benefit.

04.01.2022 Small actions speak loudly. Please spread small acts of kindness and decency when you see them or act on them. Thank You Drooleys Pizza Lounge

02.01.2022 Child Side School and Playgroup builds upon this Developmental Relationships Framework from Search Institute. All our work is based on research and applied evidence through practice. We use this framework across the board as an individual self reflection tool as staff, especially considering: how do we personally express care for ourselves? How do we challenge our own growth with our professional knowledge and experience of children and their brain development? How do we supp...ort ourselves? We use it to frame our interactions with children and with our physical learning environment. There are many different ways to express care including: setting boundaries with purpose, being dependable, being responsive... Staff and our MCC children (Middle Childhood Cluster Years 4, 5 and 6, intentional multi-aged to enable individually paced development) are currently expressing care for the indoor learning spaces, intentionally considering the purpose of each work space and expressing care for the furniture, resources, equipment... and valuing what a rich learning environment we have, way beyond what is expected or provided in traditional schooling settings. Children spend 5 days a week, over 6 hours a day, for most of their year and most of their childhood, in a school chosen by their parents that best suits their family philosophy and aspirations for their childhood. Therefore both children and staff deserve workspaces and a workplace culture that expresses care, challenges growth mindsets, provides support, shares power (equal dignity regardless of age, knowledge, experience) and expands possibilities (beyond traditional schooling and resourcing, every single day, in every single way, not just once a week or once a term). We expect and support children to express care for themselves, challenge their own social, emotional, intellectual and physical boundaries in order to grow and to expand their possibilites.

02.01.2022 Live Kindly. We are all in the same boat in these unprecedented times and our privileged capacity for regeneration is enormous.Live Kindly. We are all in the same boat in these unprecedented times and our privileged capacity for regeneration is enormous.

01.01.2022 We are spending some wonderful mornings at Child Side Playgroup enjoying the beautiful spring weather and enjoying the use of some new discovery learning equipment we purchased through a lotteries commission grant through Playgroup WA. Gratitude to Lotteries WA and Playgroup WA for supporting our curious, creative, social, active precious children grow and develop in a nurturing village.

01.01.2022 To every parent out there, give yourself a huge boost to know how important parenting is and what a difference it makes in the lives of children... Make yourself a cuppa and take some time to watch Sophie Delezio light up your life and remind us all why we are all here.