SEEN Learning Collective

💚 Firstly because it never fails to bring squeals of delight. And I believe childhood should include experiences purely just for the joy of it.

💚 The wow factor! Helping children foster a relationship with science as an exciting subject, and showing the magic that exists in our world. (Am I allowed to use science and magic in the same paragraph 😅)

💚 Children get to be experts and share their previous knowledge and experiences. Man, learning can be full on sometimes! We can't be in unchartered territory all day. We are consolidating knowledge and building confidence.

💚 There is different learning to pull out. Today we were talking about actual volcanoes, not the chemistry at play. This was one activity, amongst volcano diagrams, baking lava cakes, constructing lego volcanos. Showing a concept in a few different ways builds deeper understanding of the idea. And our learners will each connect more strongly with different activities.

💚 And of course underneath it all, our activities serve as an opportunity to work together, share an experience and express our ideas.

Think this learning style would appeal to your child? Send us a message to find out more about our One Day School for quirky, creative kids. Operating in Rotorua and Pūtaruru.

How often do we interrupt children before they are ready to move on?

A child is deeply immersed in building something, working through an idea, or reaching the point where the play has become more complex, and then it’s time to pack away, because the timetable says so.

When we do that, we are taking away their autonomy. They have to stop now, because we’ve said so. We’ve decided that the next activity on the plan holds more value than the one they are fully engaged in, which is rarely true.

The richest learning usually happens when children are absorbed in what they’re doing. Perhaps they have run into a problem and need more time to sit with it. Or maybe they are in that sweet spot, where creativity and ideas are flowing. “You can come back to it” I say, as if it’s that easy to just pick up where you’ve left off. Oops!

This is even more frustrating for neurodivergent minds. We say they struggle with paying attention, staying on-task (usually not their chosen task) and don’t cope well with transitions. And yet here they are hyper-focused on a task, and we interrupt!

Ironically, it is our own lack of flexibility that demands them to be flexible. We’ve carefully prepared an activity and can’t let it go in that moment.

I say all this with compassion, and a lot of gratitude to be teaching in a space with small numbers and far less pressure to work through a checklist of curriculum outcomes.

Even still, I don’t always get it right.

Research suggests it can take around 10 to 25 minutes of uninterrupted focus for children to reach a state of deep engagement. If we’re moving on every 30 minutes, they may only get a few minutes in that flow state before being asked to stop.

At SEEN, we reduce transitions to allow children to work through an idea from start to finish, moving on only when they are ready. This is more effective for learning, and, more importantly, sends them the message that their work and their choices matter.