BABIES AND BOOKS
I do annual Seminars for the University of Glasgow (2013 to the present day) for the Master’s degree in Early Literacy in the Education Department. I show how my interest in early learning and play inspired my baby book (Books Always Everywhere, Nosy Crow March 2013) and discuss the process of working with a publisher from the inception to the finished article.
My Workshops and Seminars include an introduction to the Treasure Basket and early learning (for Barnardo’s as part of the Book Week Scotland Nov 2013) and how this links with baby books as fascinating objects for babies. As babies learn to explore their physical environment for themselves books can be very interesting objects. Very early on babies can begin to discover for themselves all about what makes a book a book – the ‘Bookness of Books’ (my term). Books can be mouthed, dropped, used as a hat, built with, opened, closed, looked at from lots of different angles. Books can be different sizes, shapes, materials and even smell different. All of this happens before babies learn to ‘read’ them. For the Edinburgh Central Library 100th anniversary I was invited to give a Workshop in the Children’s Library June 2015 to preschoolers.
Workshops for parents include learning about picture books for babies, how to think about ‘writing’ a book for and with their baby, and actually making the books. In addition, Workshops for parents focussing on books for their babies is a great vehicle for parents to learn more about early learning, attachment, feeding, literacy and how they feel about being a parent.
FUNCTIONAL LEARNING/WALDON WORKSHOPS
I help to run an ongoing series of Workshops on Functional Learning and the Waldon Approach. These Workshops focus on the Early Learning-to-Learn Tools and their development and function. Workshops include:
Edinburgh (2012) which also served as a double book launch for Every Child Can Learn (Stroh, K. et al, Sage, 2007) and Autism and Understanding (Solomon, W. et al, Sage, 2012) // Oxfordshire, England, October 2013 where the focus was on ‘SORTING in groups’. The main speaker was Alan Proctor who was Headteacher at High Wick Hosptical School in the 1980’s where functional learning was developed // The focus of the workshop in May 2014 will be ‘SEQUENCING’ where the speaker will be Richard Brooks who runs Education and Early Intervention in Oxfordshire and who was trained by Geoffrey Waldon.
In 2016 I took part in a 2 Day Workshop in Berlin to introduce Waldon to a Autism clinic.and continue to this day to work with my colleagues from Berlin both in Berlin and Glasgow. In 2016 I took part in a pre-conference Workshop at the Young Child Conference and Expo in New York City.
See the new revised edition of Every Child Can Learn (Jane Blatt 2021) in Chapter 24 which gives suggestions and content for a three-Day Workshop for those practitioners wanting to learn more about Functional Learning Page 217.
