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 Our StoryHaving worked as a pre-school practitioner, I know that the key to effective early years' education is to excite and engage young children in activities. That's how we stimulate their creativity and allow them to explore, discover and build self-confidence. But I also know how difficult it can be to find the good quality, open-ended resources that settings need to achieve the best learning environments they can.
I became passionate about how much difference great resources can make in early years' development and wanted to learn as much as I could about the theory and best practice. So four years ago, I set out on a degree course in Early Years Education to add to my practical experience. I completed my degree last summer and, more passionate than ever, I decided that the best way for me to help dedicated practitioners get access to the sort of resources they need was to find them myself.
That's how the idea for Elemental Learning was born!
But I wanted to do more than provide resources that are great for children; I also wanted to play my part in supporting ethical enterprise. In our more socially and environmentally aware society, it's important to pay close attention to the ethical dimension when sourcing for Early Years' settings. Stakeholders are becoming more and more concerned about issues of the environment, sustainability and fair trade. More than this, ethically produced resources provide an exciting way to open a dialogue about these issues with young children.
I thought it would be quite easy to find resources that were produced on an ethical basis. To my surprise, it wasn't easy at all! I've had to look far and wide for producers that I am convinced have an ethical approach to production and have high quality products that can be used in a developmentally appropriate way. I'm delighted to say that we have brought together a great range of resources from a wide variety of fair-trade, environmentally aware and socially conscious producers around the world.
Over the last 6 months, in selecting our range, I have referred not only to recent research, theory and models of practice, but also used our own thorough observation process. Because of this, I am very confident that our resources are the most inspiring, engaging and exciting available today. We will continually add to it, and are confident that we can meet most of your learning resource needs over the years to come.
You can read more about our mission to be Great for Kids; Great for the Planet here. I hope you will also agree that our range of resources should, by nature of the principles by which they have been chosen, make them the No1 choice for today's informed Early Years' professionals.
Sally |
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