Event: ECDA's Start With Play Fall Conference 2026

Exp 07 PM: Returning to Connection: Reimagining Relationship Through Material Encounters: Wonder, Resistant Curiosity, & Becoming-Little & Returning to Connection: Reimagining Relationship Through Material Encounters: Materials Encounters

Morning Session: This opening session invites participants to slow down and reconsider what it means to know, notice, and relate in early childhood education and care. Together, we will explore wonder, resistant curiosity, and becoming-little as ethical dispositions that invite us to suspend certainty, remain open to surprise, and attend more carefully to the many ways children encounter and make meaning with the world. Together, we will begin creating the conditions for entering the material encounters of the second session with greater openness to not knowing, playfulness, and the possibilities that emerge.

Afternoon Session: This second session invites participants to think and be with materials, not only as tools for children’s expression but as active participants in the early childhood classroom. Drawing on Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, & Kocher’s (2017) Thinking with Materials, participants will be guided through sessions where they will explore and reimagine how materials “live, speak, gesture, and call to us” and children, and how they shape relationships, ideas, and possibilities in early childhood education and care spaces, and beyond.

Date: November 5, 2026
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: PM: Belvedere Golf Club