| Time to Play intends to improve the integration of young children of ethnic minority (particularly Muslim) families, into the services offered by Children’s Centres. The aim is to do this by developing culturally appropriate approaches for mother and child sessions, based on creative play as a foundation for learning. These approaches will foster communication, self esteem, language and creativity, and build on successful practice evolved through PEEP. Through participatory action research the project will arrive at recommendations for intercultural practice and materials that respect the mothers’ values and parenting styles and support their children’s development in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage.
Time to Play aims to be participatory in its approach, involving parents in the design of what ‘works’ for them as being culturally relevant and in tune with their aspirations and in recognition of what they already do at home. It aims to extend the PEEP group provision by focusing on creative play for early learning, within ethnic minority communities. These groups will be accessed via four existing Children’s Centres in Oxford, Bristol, Southampton and Birmingham. The Centres are already known to the project leaders as serving communities with a high proportion of Muslim families and of different ethnic backgrounds in each city. Each centre already runs sessions attended by mothers and their young children. The aim is to send experienced play practitioners to work in each centre to develop Time to Play approaches in consultation with mothers and practitioners in those settings. The project will run in three progressive phases.
Phase 1: consultation/information gathering
Phase 2: development and delivery of approaches;
Phase 3: dissemination.
Approaches will be documented and elaborated, and evaluation will consult with practitioners and the participating families, so as to arrive at a set of strategies that can be replicated through the dissemination of PEEP. This will be via the PEEP website, and the PEEP for Practitioners training programme.
Time to Play will be managed from Oxford PEEP, and the approaches will be researched in partnership with University researchers who already have an extensive experience of similar projects and of preparing high quality materials and publications for a range of public and academic audiences. |
