Pete is a professional sculptor, author, researcher, and trainer, and has a passion for creative education and woodwork in the Early Years. After working with a local nursery part-time, he fell for the Early Years and now runs Irresistible Learning, an Early Years Creative Consultancy. He is Chair of the Early Childhood Woodwork Association, and founder of the Big Bang Project, which advocates for woodwork provision in education.
Pete is passionate about creativity being crucial for children's development, especially in our rapidly changing world. It helps build problem-solving skills and critical thinking abilities. Nurturing creativity in young children establishes neural pathways for lifelong creative thinking.
Pete explains how directive teaching and standardised activities can hinder children's imagination and problem-solving abilities, while a lack of hands-on, open-ended experiences limits opportunities for creative exploration and sustained engagement.
In short, we should encourage and enable children to explore.
We have got a lot of challenges at the moment. I mean essentially we've got this new generation of children working their way through our settings who've essentially they've learned to swipe before they can walk. And I think we now know statistically the children's levels of focus and concentration are in decline. Their levels of physical development are in decline. I think even language and communication, there's evidence that that's in decline as well. So I think having really rich hands on experiences can certainly counter some of those aspects. I think that's part of the importance of learning through doing.
Pete Moorhouse, Early Years Creative Consultant
Pete recommends providing open-ended resources like:
The idea is that children express their ideas, without the restrictions of objects being used the "right" way. Pete believes that encouraging play and hands-on exploration helps develop children's creative and critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities.
Educators should spend time observing how children learn as they explore and focus on supporting children's creative processes, rather than focusing solely on outcomes.
You think you're doing the most innovative forest school provision, but every child is making it exactly the same tree cookie. Trying to give children more freedom to come up with their own ideas is just so important.
Pete Moorhouse, Early Years Creative Consultant
Pete tells us that woodworking promotes skills across all areas of learning and development. For example:
Pete goes on to explain how woodworking teaches valuable practical skills and sustainability concepts, as does clay and other renewable materials.
I'm a big advocate of children using clay, which can be completely sustainably used. After each session, you can rehydrate it, use it again. We've got blocks of clay that we've been using for a couple of year, without that waste. Bringing that mindset in more and more these days is very important.
Pete Moorhouse, Early Years Creative Consultant
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