Early Childhood Learning through Nature and Theory

18/05/2025

🧠 People often use the word “regulated” as if it is a synonym for “calm.”

⚖️ Regulated means your energy levels match the task at hand. Dysregulated means your energy levels do not match the task. Executive functioning skills, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, and self-control, play a significant role in helping individuals regulate their energy levels.

🌟 Helping a child regulate can sometimes mean placing them in an environment where their energy levels match the setting. Other times, it involves helping their body meet its needs so that their energy levels align with the upcoming task. This can include strategies to improve executive functioning skills, such as practicing self-control or using tools to enhance working memory.

Being REGULATED means your energy levels match the task. It does not mean ‘calm’.
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02/05/2025

It has been a while since I have offered Professional Development. I took some time out to finish a PhD, care for my child who was chronically unwell and settle in to being a single parent balancing work and family life. It's been a big couple of years....!

The good news is that I have been inundated with requests for workshops, so I am going to start delivering them again! :)

The topics available to services for booking in person in Perth will include the following, but also can be customized:

- Slow Pedagogy
- Botanical Literacies as a more meaningful path to sustainability
- Nature Pedagogies
- Learning in the Outdoor Environment and the role of the Educator
- Developing Nurturing and Caring Relationships with Children
- Balancing Behaviour Guidance and Gentle Educating
- Culturally Responsive Pedagogies
- Making your Documentation more meaningful
- Inquiry-based learning
- Literacy and Numeracy in the early years

Please email me to enquire or book a session. I have limited windows available. [email protected]

I look forward to seeing you again,
Dr Kimberley Beasley

13/10/2024

24 hour work trip to design a playground in Kununurra. It is so beautiful here. 💚

25/03/2024

Toddlers who get more screen time could be learning fewer new words, an Australian study finds, warning parents of the opportunity cost of distracting children with devices.

18/03/2024

Useful for teaching art. 💕

When I was a child I was taught the primary colours were red yellow and blue. You probably were too, but it’s just not true, the primary colours are actually cyan yellow and magenta.

I used to get very frustrated trying to mix purples, they always came out the colour of dried blood. It was not purple, the well meaning teacher who was also taught RYB primary’s would tell me to add white.. which of course just made a pale browny mauve not a bright violet which is what I wanted.

As a teenager I became obsessed with colour theory, particularly additive and subtractive CMY/ RGB colour, the physics of it and how they interact. Through hours of internet reading and experimenting magenta became a staple of my pallete and I never looked back.
Basically I contend that magenta is a primary over red because I can mix red with yellow and magenta.. but you cannot mix magenta with red. Magenta is the outer pigment. Red has yellow in it.

So today I mixed the colours needed to paint this cosmos flower with
magenta, cyan and yellow.

Any questions hit me up! I love talking about colour.

26/02/2024

Why should you stop saying ‘be careful’? Because it actually hinders one’s ability to assess risks and make informed decisions.

Unlearning ‘be careful’ has to be one of the hardest things I’ve done as a parent and playworker. Here’s a secret, I 💯 still slip up and in those moments try to correct myself and add something more…

Put simply, ‘be careful’ is too vague, it teaches nothing. Instead, we want to foster a sense of awareness, encourage critical thinking and problem solving. We do this with more descriptive language.

What do you say instead of ‘be careful’? I’d love to know 👇🏻

29/11/2023

Researchers revealed that newborn babies inherently perceive musical beats, a skill separate from their statistical learning ability.

18/11/2023

Rudolf Steiner included sleep as a part of the learning cycle, believing it helped children integrate and remember what they had learned that day. Here is modern science explaining how this works.
Looks like nap time is pretty important.

23/09/2023

Presented at the Network Teach Conference today! Thanks for having me!