Fostering Children's Wellbeing In Action VIC

We know the outdoors holds extraordinary learning potential. Now it's time to get in there and use it. In this breakout, we're getting down and dirty with nature-based learning, guided by hands-on exploration and practical ideas you can use directly with children using what's already around you.

By slowing down, observing, and becoming present, we attune ourselves to the rhythms of Country, explore the art of storytelling, and discover practical strategies for sparking a deep sense of wonder and custodianship in children. Natural loose parts, language and literacy, maths, the arts, science, and technology: all of it becomes possible when you step outside the classroom walls and trust what nature offers.

Come prepared to take off your pedagogical blinkers, roll up your sleeves, and follow the learning wherever it leads. This one is for the curious.

If the words 'teaching pre-numeracy' make you a little nervous, this session is for you.

Maths is happening in the gumnuts children sort by size, the sticks they line up end to end, the stones they arrange into patterns, the pinecones they count into groups, and the puddles they jump in! Open-ended, natural, moveable materials, loose parts, are one of the most powerful and underutilised invitations to mathematical thinking we have in education and care.

In this hands-on session, you will build with loose parts, sort them, investigate them, and discover the precursor mathematical concepts, classifying, comparing, ordering, patterning, and numeration, living inside the beautiful mess of children's everyday play.

You will explore how simple, natural, moveable materials become powerful invitations for play, all while supporting children's needs, so that academic learning never comes at the cost of wellbeing.

This practical, energising workshop flips the script on STEAM. It explores how to ditch the set activities and predetermined outcomes and get curious about what's already happening in the everyday play right in front of you.

Through guided exploration and reflection, we'll get hands-on with the play-based experiences that naturally spark curiosity, problem solving, and critical thinking. You'll examine your own role in bringing STEAM moments to life, discovering how simple shifts in language and questioning can extend a child's thinking, encourage hypothesising, and turn a passing moment of curiosity into something meaningful.

Along the way, we'll explore how STEAM play nurtures the dispositions that matter most: creativity, persistence, confidence, and the joy of figuring things out together.

Every strategy is realistic, adaptable, and ready to use from day one. When educators learn to recognise, respond to, and extend STEAM learning as it unfolds, curious minds flourish.

In this session, we're getting serious about fun, and we're going to have a bucket load of it. Join Linda Price on a road trip down memory lane as we rebuild your repertoire of songs, games, and action-based experiences that make mat times come alive with connection, autonomy, and joy.

We'll explore musical storytelling, parachute play, puppets, and big-body action songs every child will want to do again and again. First Nations perspectives will be woven through familiar songs, paired with movements that target proprioception, core strength, and coordination.

You'll walk away with a real, ready-to-use 'toolkit' you can action on Monday morning, plus a belly full of laughs. Park your inhibitions at the door. Your inner child is about to have a great day.

It's time to ditch the default playlist. The music we choose, and when we choose it, has real power to shape how children feel, connect, and move through the day, and it's easy to only scratch the surface.

Through guided reflection and hands-on exploration, we'll move beyond hitting play on the same playlist and hoping for the best (no 'fruit salad' here!). Instead, you'll build a practical toolkit of strategies that use music with real intention to guide mood, energy, and regulation in the big moments and the quiet in-between ones.

Along the way, we'll explore what it looks like to see behaviour through a wellbeing lens: shifting the question from 'how do I manage this?' to 'what does this child need right now?' and discover how music can be a simple, joyful way to meet children right where they are.

All you need is a willingness to listen differently.

Do you eat the chocolate cake made in the sandpit? Do you gasp when the dragon arrives?

Pretend play is one of the few spaces in a child's life where speech is free, where identity can be tried on and taken off, where the rules of the world bend to imagination. In dramatic play, movement, dance, and song, children sort out who they are, build belonging, make sense of a complex world, and experience a depth of joy that no structured activity can replicate.

This session is about taking that seriously. Facilitated by Briana Thorne, who brings a degree in Performing Arts alongside deep teaching pedagogy, you will explore practical provocations, props, and experiences that nurture children's freedom, competence, security, and connection.

Come ready to move, play, and remember why imagination matters.

We talk a lot about the importance of risky play. But how do you do it in practice? This session is here to answer exactly that. Facilitator Linda Price brings a free and wild childhood, and ten years of leading risky play programs at a service level, to get you moving, thinking, and playing in ways that might surprise you.

This is a hands-on, get-in-and-have-a-go session where we'll explore the language of problem-solving, risk literacy, and child-led challenge. We'll practise supporting children's exploration without hovering, rescuing, or shrinking their experience. Hold on to your hats, this one might just change the way you see the playground forever.

When children are in conflict with each other, or overwhelmed by big emotions, our response in that moment matters enormously. It can deepen a child's sense of security and belonging or teach them that their feelings are unwelcome.

This hands-on session explores what needs-centred, guidance-based responses look like in those real, messy, high-stakes moments. Through role play, real-life scenarios, and reflective practice, you will build confidence and competence in responding to dysregulation and conflict with empathy, calm, and connection. You will leave with a deeper understanding of how behaviour reflects unmet needs, and practical strategies to support children's self-worth and joy even in their most difficult moments.

In those moments where emotions run high and the room feels like it might tip (or when the occasional table does indeed tip), children need an educator who can hold their safety while honouring their autonomy. This session will help you add to that toolkit.

Early literacy is happening all around us from long before a child ever picks up a pencil. This joyful, practical workshop invites educators to reimagine what it looks and sounds like.

Through guided reflection and playful exploration, we'll get hands-on with the foundational skills that underpin literacy: the back-and-forth of a great conversation, the delight of a well-timed rhyme, a child who hears the rhythm in words before they can read them. You'll build a practical toolkit supporting turn-taking, listening, phonological awareness, and the ability to hear rhythm, rhyme, and sound within words.

Along the way, we'll look at everyday routines and play through a fresh lens and discover that the literacy-rich moments already happening in your setting matter more than you might think.

Every strategy is realistic, adaptable, and ready to use straight away. When educators see the literacy in the everyday, children grow into confident communicators, and that's where the real magic begins.