FGC Early Childhood

18/09/2026

Yay to Happy House and to Ms. Angelo - one of our amazing FGC Early Childhood Students!!!

🌟 Celebrating Excellence at Happy House! 🌟

We are incredibly proud to celebrate our Lead VPK Teacher, Mrs. Angelo, who was recently featured in the Early Learning Coalition’s Family Guide magazine! This well-deserved recognition highlights her journey in early childhood education and her dedication to helping children learn, grow, and thrive.

We are also excited to share Happy House’s official 2025–2026 VPK results:

⭐ 90/100 Performance Score
⭐ EXCELLENT State Designation
⭐ 100% Student Achievement
⭐ 100% Student Learning Gains

These outstanding results reflect the dedication, care, and high-quality instruction provided in our VPK program. Mrs. Angelo’s passion for her students and commitment to excellence make a difference every day, and we are truly blessed to have her leading our VPK classroom.

Please join us in congratulating Mrs. Angelo on this wonderful recognition and celebrating the continued success of Happy House VPK! ❤️📚🍎

30/04/2026

Just in case anyone needs this. ;-)

Process Art Letter for Families, Supporting Creativity Through Play 💌🎨

Sometimes the most meaningful learning doesn’t come home in a neat, finished masterpiece… and that’s okay 💫 This printable Process Art Letter for Parents helps educators and families better understand the magic behind child-led creativity. Instead of focusing on the final product, process art celebrates exploration, imagination, and the joy of creating.

As shared in the printable , children engaged in process art are building essential skills like fine motor development, problem-solving, and self-expression all through hands-on, play-based experiences.

It also invites meaningful conversations shifting from “What did you make?” to “Tell me how you made it.” 💭

Looking for a simple way to share the value of process art with families? 👉 Download and use this printable letter to support communication and celebrate creativity through play here: https://info.scholarschoice.ca/process-art-printables

How to Talk to Parents About the Value of Process Art blog: https://tinyurl.com/58t5sezk

19/12/2025

Happy Holidays from Teacher Prep!
Wishing you a joyful season filled with rest, inspiration, and all the magic that comes with shaping future minds.

10/12/2025

Yesterday was graduation! We are so proud of our graduates!!

03/12/2025

24/11/2025

YES!!! It is ok if they don't want to go to the Blocks! It is ok if they want to stay in the blocks all day! When we dictate where children go, or when they go there, we are taking away their autonomy and stifling their play AND learning!

“How do you make sure children play in each area of provision each week?”

You don’t.
Because play is not a tick-list. ✨

In a gentle, heart-led approach, we slow down and protect play. We don’t direct children around the room or ask them to collect experiences. We trust their instincts, their fascinations and their natural drive to learn through play.

🌿 What would Scandinavian children do?
In Nordic settings, children choose where they play — and stay there for long, unhurried stretches. It’s totally normal to spend the whole morning outdoors building dens, digging, climbing or cooking mud soup with friends.
They’re not rotated. They’re respected.

Play isn’t seen as a break from learning — it is learning. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, long chunks of uninterrupted free play are protected daily because the outcomes speak for themselves: wellbeing, confidence, problem-solving, independence, social strength.

🌿 Children don’t learn in compartments.
One rich moment of child-led play can cover multiple EYFS areas naturally.

A child building a fox den outside isn’t just doing “construction”. They’re:
📐 exploring space & measure • 🗣 building language • 🤝 negotiating roles • 💪 using gross motor strength • 🌍 drawing from stories & nature knowledge

All woven together — joyfully, without adult rotation.

🌿 Research backs this up.
EPPE highlights deep involvement and sustained shared thinking.
NAEYC (2022) reminds us:

“Free play… encourages children’s initiative, independence and problem-solving.”

And as Dr Peter Gray says:

“Play is not a break from learning — it is learning.”

When we stop chasing checklists and start trusting the process of play…
✨ Children flourish
✨ Behaviour softens
✨ Curiosity deepens
✨ Learning becomes authentic

This is the heart of Hygge in the Early Years™ — warm, connected, child-centred practice rooted in trust. 🌿

—

🌟 Ready to bring this Scandinavian-inspired approach into your setting?
Join me inside Hygge in the EY™ — where we blend Nordic pedagogy, wellbeing and play into transformational training.

👉 Find out more at www.hyggeintheearlyyears.co.uk

14/11/2025

Early Childhood is Neuroscience, Not Handprint Crafts.

Don't get us wrong...

Handprints are super sweet.
They’re truly sentimental.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with capturing one once or twice a year to remember how small their hands once were.

But what’s happening now goes far beyond that.

In so many classrooms, handprint crafts are being mass produced for every holiday, weekly theme, and event. These are not learning experiences. The child’s only role is getting their hand pressed into paint while the adult does the rest, adding decorations, details, and even “quotes” to the finished product. What’s left behind isn’t learning, it’s a display of adult effort and approval.

All of this burns valuable time and materials that could be used to offer real, brain-building experiences. The hours spent creating “ cute projects” could be spent exploring, experimenting, and discovering. The paints, papers, and tools could serve genuine sensory play and scientific inquiry.

If we want early childhood education to be taken seriously, we have to stop leading with what’s cute and start prioritizing what’s meaningful. When classrooms are filled with crafts children aren’t truly creating, we overshadow the deep and powerful work of early development.

And if capturing a handprint once or twice a year was all it was, this wouldn’t even be a topic for discussion. But when these prints fill classrooms year-round, it’s time to have the conversation and raise the bar.

Join us for our upcoming webinar, “Rethinking Early Learning: More Than Crafts and Worksheets,” where we’ll explore how to shift from product-focused activities to authentic, brain-aligned experiences that truly honor how children learn. (Nov 26, 2025 12:00 PM EST)

FREE REPLAY FOR EVERYONE WHO SIGNS UP!

Join for FREE: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DfJ26HjERJSlS4BOhSgQ8w #/registration

Get CERTIFIED: https://www.weskoolhouse.com/store-webinars

25/07/2025

10/07/2025

Process Vs. product!!!

If Every Piece Looks the Same, It Wasn’t Theirs to Begin With.

Walk into many early childhood classrooms and you’ll see a familiar sight... rows of identical art projects. Twenty penguins with the same cotton-ball belly. Twenty suns with exactly eight rays. Twenty perfectly traced rainbows in the exact same color order.

To an untrained eye, this may look like success. But what it actually reveals is that every child followed the same adult-led instructions to reach a pre-determined outcome (And let's not forget how much work the adult did compared to the child).

That isn’t creativity. That’s compliance.

When we give children a model and ask them to copy it step-by-step, the thinking has already been done for them. There is no real decision-making, no problem-solving, and no opportunity to explore. The child’s job becomes ex*****on instead of expression.

Now picture a different approach... Children are offered the same materials (paper, scissors, paint, etc) but no final example to replicate. One child makes a swirling abstract pattern. Another creates something that looks like a face. A third mixes colors just to see what happens. Every piece is different because every child brought their own ideas, choices, and perspective into the process.

That is what learning looks like.

Children are already spending much of their day following directions—cleaning up, lining up, washing hands, transitioning between activities. Instruction has its place, but if we want children to become thinkers, they need consistent opportunities to make decisions. And the only way to learn how to make decisions is by making them.

Open-ended art is one of the most powerful ways to support that growth. It invites experimentation, risk-taking, and reflection. It allows children to try, revise, and discover what works for them. When every piece looks the same, what we’re really displaying isn’t the child’s work. It’s ours.

Real learning leaves room for mistakes, surprise, and difference. If the walls are full of matching projects, we’re not celebrating creativity. We’re replacing it.