Listen to interesting interviews with early years professionals, discover more playgroup stories, learn more about play, and our wellbeing. This podcast is about family, friendship, community and all the goodness and complexity that comes with that. There’s lots of joy to be found in the early years and here we seek that, forge greater connections and share stories firsthand.  

EPISODE 1

The Importance of the Village- In Conversation with Professor Emeritus Dorothy Scott OAM

From an early age, Dorothy had a passion to help families. She wanted to make the lives of vulnerable children safe and enriching. She wanted children to play. Enjoy listening to Dorothy’s interesting life story below.

“What does it take to build a village and in our contemporary society what might it take to rebuild the village- where the village, where the sense of community, the social cohesion, the sense of belonging that can connect us to one another has actually been diminished- by long commutes, by very busy families where everyone is working and by the increasing social isolation that we often experience in today’s world despite our connectedness in an electronic sense.”- Dorothy Scott

EPISODE 2 – Part One

Imagination in play and imagination in STEM – In Conversation with Monash University’s Conceptual PlayLab Team

Marilyn Fleer holds the Foundation Chair in Early Childhood Education and Development at Monash University. Last year, Fleer became the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow. Fleer describes winning the Laureate: “Like winning a gold medal, it is just unbelievable, like winning the noble prize for academia in Australia.”

We caught up with Fleer and Senior Research Fellows Dr Prabhat Rai and Dr Glykeria Fragkiadaki to learn more about their ground-breaking research study as they investigate how families and teachers create conditions for children’s conceptual thinking in play-based settings.

“Developing children’s imagination is at the same time developing their ability to think conceptually and what’s exciting about our work is that we focus on imagination knowing that in imaginary situations they can grow these amazing concepts.” – Professor Marilyn Fleer