Professional Development
Professional learning that changes the way educators see children.
Seeing play differently. Understanding children more deeply. Responding with confidence and intention.
At Perfectly Playful, professional learning is about more than adding another strategy to an educator's toolkit.
It is about developing the knowledge, curiosity and confidence to look more closely at children's play, behaviour and relationships, and consider what they might be communicating through their everyday experiences.
Because play is a child's world.
When we take the time to understand what children are exploring, expressing, practising and making sense of through play, we can respond with greater understanding, intention and care.
Not one-size-fits-all professional development
Every early childhood service is different. Your children, educators, environment, relationships, strengths, challenges and priorities are unique to your context.
That's why we begin by understanding your service, then shape professional learning around your context and the realities of everyday practice.
Signature professional learning
Seeing Play Differently
A six-week professional learning engagement
A six-week professional learning engagement for early childhood teams who want to look beyond the surface of children's play, deepen their understanding of what children might be communicating, and respond with greater confidence, connection and intention.
- Understand
- Learn
- Apply
- Reflect
- Review
- Continue
Across six weeks, your team will move through an initial consultation, tailored professional learning, collaborative observation, application, reflection and review. Each stage builds on what educators are noticing and learning, allowing the engagement to respond to the needs of your service and the children you support.
The specific consultation, professional learning, observation and reflection arrangements are agreed with each service before the engagement begins, ensuring the experience is tailored to your priorities and context.
- Wk 1
Week 1 | Understand
Begin with your service, your children and your priorities. Explore what educators are noticing, what is happening in the environment and what the team wants to understand more deeply.
This may include discussion about:
- current strengths and challenges
- children's interests and aspirations
- play and learning
- educator confidence and professional learning needs
- environments and routines
- relationships and connection
- particular areas of concern or curiosity
- service goals and priorities
The initial consultation can be supported by information gathered beforehand, helping us make the process focused and purposeful from the beginning.
- Wk 2
Week 2 | Learn
Explore tailored professional learning connected to your team's questions, children and context.
Depending on your context, professional learning may explore:
- seeing play differently
- understanding play and its different forms and elements
- observing what is happening within play
- understanding play segments and how play develops and changes
- recognising learning and development through play
- understanding behaviour through a developmental lens
- connection and relationships
- emotional regulation and co-regulation
- movement and physical play
- agency, autonomy and confidence
- environments that support play
- joining, following, extending and scaffolding children's play
- children's voice, participation and agency
- reflective practice and intentional decision-making
Professional learning is informed by early childhood education, the EYLF, QKLG and NQS, together with Katie's professional experience and postgraduate study in Therapeutic Child Play.
- Wk 3
Week 3 | Apply
Bring learning into practice through observation, play and collaborative reflection.
Collaborative and reflective, not evaluative.
Together, we may consider:
- What are children doing?
- What are they interested in?
- What are they exploring or practising?
- What might their play be communicating?
- What strengths and capabilities are we seeing?
- What patterns or changes are emerging?
- What might the environment, relationships or routines be contributing?
- When might we join, follow, extend or scaffold?
- When might we step back and trust children's growing capabilities?
- What might this child need from me right now?
Katie observes children's play and works alongside educators to explore what is happening in real time. The purpose is to build educator confidence, professional judgement and intentional decision-making within everyday practice.
- Wk 4
Week 4 | Reflect
Return to what educators are noticing, explore emerging questions and consider what may support children and strengthen practice.
Together, we consider:
What did we notice?
What might this tell us?
What are we understanding differently?
What might we try next?
Rather than delivering another generic workshop, this session is shaped around the team's observations, questions and emerging needs.
- Wk 5
Week 5 | Review
Consolidate learning, reflect on changes in practice and consider what has developed across the journey.
Together, we consider:
- What has changed?
- What are educators noticing now?
- What has supported children's play and participation?
- What has strengthened connection?
- What new questions have emerged?
- What will we continue?
- What might we adapt?
- What would we like to explore next?
- Wk 6
Week 6 | Continue
Bring the journey together, identify next steps and consider how learning can continue to influence everyday practice.
The learning and reflection from the engagement can be captured in a shared record of professional learning, reflections and next steps.
At the completion of the engagement, educators receive a Professional Development Certificate acknowledging their participation and completion of the Seeing Play Differently professional learning engagement.
Explore Professional Learning Opportunities
Alongside the signature engagement, Perfectly Playful offers other ways for teams to learn together.
Micro Workshops
Two-hour online professional learning sessions.
A focused, accessible way for teams to explore an area of practice together, wherever they are. Sessions are shaped around the questions and priorities your team brings.
Staff Meeting Professional Development
Two-hour in-person professional learning sessions.
Professional learning delivered within your service, making the most of the time your team already has together. A practical way to build shared understanding without taking educators away from their day.
Tailored Professional Learning
Learning shaped around a service's context, priorities and needs.
For teams who want something beyond a set format. We begin by understanding your service, then shape the learning around what will be most meaningful for your children, educators and context.
1:1 Professional Mentorship
Individualised professional learning for early childhood educators and leaders who want to reflect on their practice, explore challenges and develop confidence in their professional decision-making.
Professional mentorship offers a dedicated space to explore your questions, experiences and professional goals in a supportive, reflective environment.
Sessions can be shaped around areas such as children's play, behaviour, relationships, regulation, environments, children's agency and responsive practice.
Mentorship can be delivered online or face-to-face, where available. Individualised professional learning workshops may also be arranged to suit the educator's goals and context.
Each engagement begins with a conversation about what you would like to explore and the type of support that would be most valuable.
Mentorship provides educational and reflective professional support. It is not clinical supervision, therapy or a substitute for formal workplace supervision.
Enquire About MentorshipWhat might we explore together?
These areas offer starting points for discussion, not a fixed workshop menu. We select the focus together around your service's priorities.
Explore professional learning topics
Play, behaviour, regulation, relationships and more.
Play and learning
Play
Looking beyond what children do to consider what they might be communicating through their play.
Explore how play can offer insights into children's interests, ideas, relationships, experiences and developing understanding of the world.
Play can invite us to wonder about what a child may be expressing or working through, but it does not give us a definitive answer. We remain curious, listen to the child and consider their play within the context of their relationships, development and experiences.
Movement
Considering the role of movement and physical play in children's development.
Exploring how movement and physical play support children's participation, regulation and growing capabilities.
Supporting play
Considering when to join, follow, extend, scaffold or step back.
Exploring how our responses can protect children's agency while supporting their learning, connection and development.
When children tell us what they want, how are we facilitating it? Sometimes this means providing resources, adapting the environment, joining the play or offering scaffolding.
Behaviour and communication
Behaviour
Looking beneath behaviour through a developmental and relational lens.
Understanding behaviour more deeply does not mean removing boundaries or expectations. It means bringing greater information, curiosity and intention to how we respond.
Children's voice
Listening to children's ideas, interests, questions, aspirations and decisions.
Children communicate their ideas, interests and aspirations in many different ways. Considering how these can influence practice keeps children's voices at the centre of the process.
Children's voices can be heard through:
- conversations
- children's meetings
- observations
- documentation
- choices and decisions
- repeated interests
- questions and ideas
- the ways children return to and develop their play
What do children want to play?
What do they want to learn or try?
Who do they want to play with?
What do they want to create?
What are they curious about?
What do they want to be able to do?
Connection and wellbeing
Regulation
Exploring emotional regulation, co-regulation and stress responses.
Considering the role of supportive relationships in helping children develop regulation over time.
Relationships and connection
Strengthening the relationships that provide children with security and belonging.
Exploring how secure, responsive relationships create the foundation for children's learning, wellbeing and participation.
Environments and agency
Environments
Considering how environments, resources and routines shape children's play.
Exploring how environments, resources, routines and expectations can support or restrict children's play and participation.
Agency and autonomy
Supporting children to make choices, take appropriate risks and experience themselves as capable.
Listening to children does not mean saying yes to everything. Educators still maintain appropriate boundaries, support safety and consider the needs of others, while making space to understand what matters to children and how their ideas can inform meaningful practice.
When children tell us what they want, how are we facilitating it? Sometimes this means providing resources, adapting the environment, joining the play or offering scaffolding. Sometimes it means supporting children to navigate boundaries, safety or the needs of others while still protecting their agency and voice.
Educator wellbeing and practice
Reflective practice
Supporting educators to observe, question, interpret, respond and review with greater intention.
Building the habits of noticing, wondering and making intentional decisions within everyday practice.
Your service does not need to have all the answers before we begin.
We work together to identify where professional learning will be most valuable.
Understanding does not mean doing nothing.
Looking beneath behaviour does not mean ignoring behaviour.
Children sometimes need adults to provide clear boundaries, redirect behaviour, intervene for safety or support them to understand the impact of their actions.
The difference is the information we bring to that response.
When educators understand more about the child, their development, relationships, environment, play and experiences, they have more information to consider how and why to respond.
The goal is not to remove boundaries.
It is to respond with greater understanding, intention and confidence.
What your team takes away
Professional learning should translate into everyday practice.
- deeper understanding of children's play, development, behaviour and communication
- practical ideas that can be applied within everyday practice
- greater confidence in supporting regulation, agency and participation
- shared professional language and understanding across the team
- Documented reflections, next steps and a Professional Development Certificate acknowledging participation and completion of the professional learning engagement. This certificate is not an accredited qualification.
Depending on the engagement and your service's priorities, your team may take away:
- deeper understanding of children's play and development
- increased confidence in interpreting children's behaviour and communication
- practical ideas that can be applied within everyday practice
- greater confidence in supporting regulation and co-regulation
- strategies for supporting children's agency and participation
- a stronger understanding of when to join, extend, scaffold or step back
- opportunities to reflect on environments, relationships and routines
- shared professional language and understanding across the team
- documented reflections and identified next steps
- a Professional Development Certificate upon completion
Most importantly, the aim is to support educators to feel more confident, curious and intentional in the moments that matter.
Grounded in early childhood practice
Early Childhood Education
Children's development, learning and relationships.
Play
A meaningful way children explore, communicate and make sense of their world.
Professional Practice
Connected to the EYLF, QKLG, NQS, the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and contemporary early childhood practice.
Reflective Practice
Observe, question, consider, respond and review.
Informed by Katie's experience as an Early Childhood Teacher, Educational Leader and Director, and her Graduate Certificate in Therapeutic Child Play.
Tailored professional learning
Your service. Your children. Your priorities.
Every early childhood service has its own strengths, questions and priorities. Professional learning is shaped around your context, the children in your care and the areas your team wants to explore.
Learning that responds to your priorities
Whether your team is exploring play, behaviour, relationships, regulation, children's agency, physical play, supported risky play or learning environments, we begin by understanding what matters most to your service.
Where applicable, professional learning may align with your Kindy Uplift priorities.
Educational and consultative support
Perfectly Playful provides educational and consultative professional learning for early childhood services. The service is designed to support educators and teams to develop their knowledge, reflective practice and confidence.
Perfectly Playful does not provide clinical therapy, diagnosis or individual therapeutic treatment.
Ready to see play differently?
Let's start with a conversation. Tell us a little about your service, your team and what you would like to explore. Together, we can consider your priorities, identify where professional learning may be valuable and determine whether Seeing Play Differently is the right fit for your service.
Enquire About Professional Learning