The Care Inspectorate recently published ‘Our Creative Journey’ which explores and shares how expressive arts benefit children, whilst showcasing the role that childminders play in promoting creativity.
Playing creatively helps children flourish as confident, resilient and happy individuals and is vital for child development and future learning. It is also a key ingredient for children to be able to follow their curiosity, solve problems and make sense of the world.
Our Creative Journey is aimed at promoting good practice in all types of Early Learning and Childcare settings from across Scotland, including childminders, playgroups, out of school care and nurseries.
Following the success of ‘My World Outdoors’ and ‘My Childminding Experience’ from the Care Inspectorate, Our Creative Journey reflects their new approach to improvement by helping all services aspire to be the best they can be and have the greatest impact on children’s lives.
Developed on a collaborative basis with several partner organisations - including SCMA - the resource allows childminders and other practitioners to tell their own stories with individual children and parents involved for the first time.
The practice examples feature a wide range of expressive arts, including art, drama, pretend play, music, and song, model making, loose-parts play and storytelling. The way these are presented tries to bring to life how taking part in expressive arts can transform children’s experiences.
For example, a childminding service in Perth is featured that provides a creative opportunity for children to create stories and produced booklets for their families, which promotes artistic skills, communication, sharing ideas, stimulating their imaginations, reading and telling stories.
The practice examples are set out under the GIRFEC Wellbeing Indicators (also referred to as SHANARRI) to show how individual outcomes are being met. This also fits the approach of the new Health and Social Care Standards, which describe how high quality care should be experienced by an individual. Our Creative Journey models the new Standards by highlighting how expressive arts can positively affect the outcomes of individual children. As you will know, inspections of childminding services and other ELC settings are focusing more on assessing the impact on children’s outcomes rather than just provider inputs.
Our Creative Journey is now available online, but it is also a live resource with practice examples regularly updated on The Hub section of the Care Inspectorate’s website. If you have any activities or examples you would like to feature on the Hub, please complete the
Submit Your Story form on the Care Inspectorate’s The Hub website.
Take a look at
Our Creative Journey from the Care Inspectorate.