Early Years PE - A Founding Director's Journey (Ep 5)

Podcast Intro:

Welcome to another episode of For Your Ears from the Early Years! Today, we're thrilled to introduce you to Josh Candy, the founder and director of Early Years PE, who is a passionate advocate for transforming physical education for our youngest learners.

With over 15 years of experience in sports coaching and a BA in Physical Education, Josh has dedicated the last seven years to revolutionising how PE is perceived and implemented in the early years. He emphasises the importance of physical literacy, recognising that foundational movement skills are just as vital as academic skills in a child’s development.

In this episode, Josh shares his journey, from what inspired him to create Early Years PE to how he’s making an impact by intertwining the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) with imaginative and fun PE sessions. He skillfully balances structured activities with opportunities for free play, helping children develop holistically while laying down a lifelong love for movement.

Please tune in to hear about Josh’s innovative approach, explore the current challenges in physical education, and learn how his methods set children up for healthier, more active lives. Whether you're an educator, a parent, or simply passionate about early childhood development, this episode is packed with valuable insights and inspiration.

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#ChildDevelopment 
#PhysicalLiteracy
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#EarlyYearsPE 
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Transcript

Audio file

Episode 5 Josh Candy.mp3

Transcript

Speaker 1

Welcome to For Your Ears from the Early Years, the podcast that brings you inspiring voices from early childhood education. Join me, Lili-Ann Kriegler, your host, for a weekly dive into fresh perspectives, invaluable knowledge, and motivation to enrich your early years journey. It is brought to you by Kriegler Education and elevates your passion for the early years. 

Today, I'm talking to Josh Candy, founder and director of Early Years PE. Josh works in the UK's early years sector. Hello, Josh.

Speaker 2

Hi, Lili-Ann, how are you?

Speaker 1

You. I'm so good today. I know we're at different times. I think you're in the morning and I'm in the evening.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm. I'm 8:45, so there is still time. I've got two kids, so it's a bit of a lay-in for me.

Speaker 1

Oh, good. That's great. Now, I want everyone to know more about you. I spotted you on LinkedIn and just thought about what you were doing around activity in the early years. I think it's very timely for the era that we're living in. I'd love you to share more about your professional journey and what led you, with a BA degree in physical education, to specialise in the early years.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, well, thanks for the intro. It's a great intro. You've covered quite a lot. My name is Josh Candy, and I'm based in London in the UK. I'm the director and founder of earlier PE Adventure, which I've only just really started, and it has not been going on for too long. Now. I've been about 3 months into it. But as you said, I've been working in the earlier industry for the last seven years. My background is that I'm 32 now, and since I was 14 years old, I've been coaching football or soccer to some of our viewers, and that's been my base. I started very young coaching. Not as a job, but more just sort of recreationally, just enjoying it. And that led me to stay within that teaching coaching area. I progressed up to doing my first gap year in a private boys' school, which was very hot on sports at 17. That was my first taste of all that teaching. Then wanted to go into primary school to do primary teaching. That was the age that I kind of really enjoyed, and I was advised at the time to do a secondary P level so that I could drop it down to a primary P level. So, I got my BA degree in physical education at the secondary level. In that last year of university, I was undecided about whether the secondary level was right for me, whether I wanted to do that or whether teaching, in general, was suitable for me.

 I found a big contrast between teaching and coaching. Teaching was more like having a set path; you had to follow specific ways to go and hit your particular targets, and there was only so much the teacher could do to change that. 

But with coaching, you have that whole freedom of understanding who you are and who you have in front of you; each individual may learn a different way, and you can tailor to that and plan that journey. I thought, OK, but I want to get back into coaching again, and I looked at getting my Football Association in the UK coaching football badges. But the waiting list is long. 

So, in the interim period, my wife or my partner at the time, my now wife, was working in the nursery and just said there's a. Sports teacher role coming up. It was branded as a sports teacher in a nursery. 

I've done primary and secondary coaching. Let's do the early years for a bit, and then once my coaching badges come through, I can add that to the CV. Eight years later, I'm still here in the early years. So yeah, it drew me. It drew me in. And I found very quickly in the early years that zero to fives are so spongy. They’re children and are just such sponges. And when I first started doing this sports teacher role in the nurseries, it was very nice, simple games. It was fun and cute. I call it the cute games, hoops, bean bags, buckets, tunnels, etc. And it was good. However, the teacher and coach within me just wanted to get something out of my background to try and see how the children responded to it. So, I introduced football and rugby, cricket, tennis, and athletics. And I've got quite a good way of adapting things to specific ages. That just rolled, and it kept on going and kept them going. I got better in my practice each year. And it's just got me to the point where I know there's such a gap in that market. There are nowhere near enough early settings utilising physical education. It's always physical development.  The emphasis is less on sports.  And if it is, it’s using external providers. Practitioners don't feel equipped enough to be able to deliver it. That led me to start my early years in PE, where I did the same job I've been doing for the last seven years. I'm just trying to broaden that portfolio now. And try to get as many children as possible and settings on board with the ethos and philosophy behind why we do physical education in the early years. And yeah, it's been really interesting.

Speaker 1

Yes, it's amazing how passion drives you to get into something and enjoy it. I love your description of the kids are spongy. I have found that myself. I also found that I was secondary trained and was equally frustrated as you were in finding that you had to achieve certain milestones set for you.  That the early years space is much more creative. And funnily enough, you end up working with a lot more adults as well in this early space than you would in the secondary space. And I know that secondary teachers love their area, but I was like you, I really wanted that creativity.  With UEFA soccer and the Olympics, you found precisely the right time to inspire our young children to do this. It's fascinating to hear how your journey began. And I can see how your early experience and education have shaped your return to PE. 

So, what are some of the changes you've implemented in how you work with young children? What is unique about what you are doing?

Speaker 2

So, one of the most significant barriers over the last five years or seven years, but mostly five years, was when COVID kicked in, and I began my challenge to understand this area. I thought, ‘Let's start understanding what the earlier sector says. Like I said, I came into it having no idea what the early years were like. It was nothing at all. So, in the last five years, the most significant barrier I've faced was that sport or teaching sport was seen as very elitist. And it was, it was told to me that oh, no, we don't want to teach sport. It's too competitive. It's for the elite. 

We don't need to do PE; the children will do it in school. And at first, at the beginning of hitting these barriers, it made me feel a little bit like, ‘Oh, what's the point? Why am I bothering?’ If the people relatively high up within the industry are telling me this, then they must be right. And I kept on during that COVID time had a lot of spare time where I couldn't do things.so I was homing in on researching and networking. And that's when I updated my LinkedIn profile and tried to network with as many people as possible.

And I started to find that. I was getting far more people to understand what I was doing then than before. So, I kept it going, and the way to answer your question was to go back to slightly divergent there. 

But regarding your question about how I changed things, that's been the real positive that has come out of it. I take exactly what I've learned from sports, physical education, and my degree. And I understand the structures as a concept. What I do is make it appropriate for the age group. So, our under-fives will not go into playing football as 11 a side; they won't have corners, free kicks or the things you usually see in rugby. I'm not expecting the children to form a scrum or come out and do the Haka. But that is the perception of what people think when they hear you’re doing sports for this age group, they're like, well, how did they do it? The main foundation upon which I build my work is just bringing in the core understandings of these sports so the children can relate to them. They can take standard practices that they already know and do it in a fun way where they don't even feel like they're being taught. 

That builds a positive relationship with that particular movement, skill, or what they might see. As they go to school, they might see it when they leave the nursery and go into education or even outside of education. And a spark might be there. They think, oh, you know, I enjoyed that. Or, I understand that. And that's what my goal is. 

It's to avoid trying and producing the next talent. It's not to bring out the best in the children in that particular sport. It's just to give them more opportunities that they may never have had before. It's to broaden their horizons holistically. It’s to the child's development, not just physically, but cognitively through all the different 7 areas of development. And it's just playing sports, exercise, and physical activity an enjoyable time.  so many of us as adults have had such bad experiences with sports and physical education at school. I feel like it's because it didn't start early enough. It began far too late. So, if we can bring in that enjoyment now, it makes it so much easier. And I do the fun games and vary the differences between what we do each week. So, if I had football, rugby or cricket, they last six weeks. We have a continuous approach to teaching. So, from week one, it is the actual introduction, and then we build upon that each week.  I have my little mascots that I use as well. they're little animals, and the animals play a massive part in how I teach this age group because they're relatable. I'll give you one example quickly. We use poppy, the Penguin, a tiny little Penguin I had from when I was a child. Bring her along to my lessons. I introduce her as our football expert. And the children for the six weeks become Penguins.

And you're probably asking why Penguins.

Penguins don't have hands. So, when their children don't have hands, we pretend they've got flippers. They can't use their hands. It encourages them to not use the ball with their hands. Penguins carry their eggs by their feet. So, we introduced that. So not, that's not just PE learning. That's like a geographical. Yeah, a holistic understanding. So, we're learning about Penguins as well. In fact, it's something that many of our teachers who come to lessons don't even know about Penguins. Carry. Their eggs with their feet. We encourage that. The footballs become the eggs; the children become the penguins. 

I set up games where they're moving across blocks of ice. And they're moving from one side to the other. And they're taking their balls with them, not using their hands. To them, that's just such an imaginative game. And they love it. And we put little objects and stuff out there pretending to be sharks and whatnot. But for me, what they're doing is understanding the core value of football. The dribbling, direction of play, teamwork, agility. Moving around. That's what I'm getting from it. But what the children get from it is just an enjoyment and a fun game to play with that particular object. And I do that for all of my sports.

Speaker 1

I've got a few comments after that incredible description of what you do. The first thing, Josh, is I have to laud you for not listening to what people tell you is a limitation. the fact that you broadened your scope and looked around for different experts or people who would be your cheerleaders to use a sporting metaphor or something. I think that's a great thing that you did and I would love all educators to do that to not be limited by what they believe other people imagine is the way it should be. So, widening your influence. And I think as a result, your impact will be much broader than if you listened to those people. 

I, as an educator, think that another thing you've done is you've put on not one hat to the teacher, but I call them the three hats. So, the first hat has you look at where the children are coming from so you know where they are in their developmental stages. The second hat is where they are in the present. So, understand what you can do with them right now. But from your perspective, I hear you're bringing the future forward. You're wearing the hat of the future and casting your net into the skills they will require later. The dribbling, the direction, the teamwork, the agility. 

They are all things that, as you say, the children might not even know the names of those things, but they're going to get them. The three hat thing you're using for me is sensational as a teacher, and I love that. I also think that using fun and imagination is what attracted me to your work in the first place. And I didn't know you had a penguin mascot, but how wonderful is that? And have them shuffling along the ice and doing things like that. There are so many wonderful educational things that you've put in, not only for the children but for other educators to understand and for you as an entrepreneur. You know, I think the steps you've taken are great for other teachers to think about. So that is great. 

And there are these seven areas of learning. I know it's the UK; few global people understand what they are. So, I'm just gonna say what they are. The first is communication and language, the second is personal, social and emotional development, the third is physical development, the fourth is literacy, the fifth is mathematics, the sixth is understanding the world, and the seventh is expressive art and design. Those are the seven areas you're talking about. I could hear the understanding of the world that you mentioned. And I can understand physical development.

But tell me about literacy. Why is literacy critical in physical exercise?

Speaker 2

I didn't point out this part in my previous description of what I do, but I'll add to it now. When I started doing these lessons for the children, a typical session would be the children would go down to the park, the local park, or get into the garden. I'd set up. Then it would be, ‘Right guys, let's go’. With that, it was OK, but sometimes their attention might wander. If we're at a park, they might have seen a squirrel, or they might have seen a bird, or they might have seen a plane. And then you've gotta get that attention back. And sometimes, with that age group, as we know, it's very difficult. If you haven't got the children's attention from the very beginning. You struggle to keep it. It's very easily gone, and the attention may only last for maybe 15 to 20 minutes in general, so you've got to try and make sure that time is crucial. So, I sometimes battled to get that attention from the children straight away without trying to say, ‘OK, come on guys, look, look back at me now’. Like, what's this? What have I got here, blah blah? 

So, I started to change my approach, and I realised what children love doing so much. When you walk into a nursery setting or an earlier setting or even at home, grandparents and parents, what's the one thing when a child will sit there for a few minutes and just be concentrating, fixed, and focused? I was like—it's stories. 

My daughter, I've got two daughters. I've got a 7-year-old now and a 2-year-old. I can only get them both to sit still when we're reading a story at bedtime. So, I started to look around, widening my horizons to what literature is out there for sport and PE, and there's not much. There is not a lot for that particular age group as well. And that's another thing I plan on doing, which is making that a thing. But that's for another time. I started to find little books. Some are good, and all sports are related to whether we're doing football at the time. Everyone should be familiar with Mr Men. There's a book called Mr Men and the Big Match, and all I do is get the kids to the park when they first arrive, and we sit down. I introduce Poppy the Penguin. I get the book out, and we read it. 

The book has words that the children will then take with what they're learning, so they'll see the ball. Then they're gonna use the ball. they'll see the football goals, and then they'll see the football goals. In a different place, they'll see the pitch. We'll also talk about what we see in the book, so we might be reading something when scoring a goal, and we'll say right, we score the goal. What do we say when we score a goal? We cheer, and we get excited. We clap. The book is the initial starting point. The book, for me, is vital and key, and I don't go any less than now without using some form of story or book that has something to do with whatever lesson we're learning, and that is the grab that's the attention. That's the draw, and we'll focus on the words we see within the book and continue to use those words throughout our games. For me, again, that's what I want to see. The children don't necessarily understand what's happening. But subconsciously, I know that the children are picking up upon this thing in the book or with probably the Penguin or whichever mascot we use. And there are certain words that we'll use continuously throughout that lesson so that it subconsciously drips in with the children. 

At the moment, we're learning tennis.

And I have a Crawly, the Crab for tennis.

Speaker 1

You have who for tennis?

Speaker 2

I'll super quickly go for all of my animals and why. But Crawly, the Crab we use for tennis. We use our crab claws at the front that we've got to hold onto our tennis racket nicely and tightly. The children must hold it in, in, in the correct way. We're teaching that body position very early so that when they can go and explore it themselves, they already know the proper positions to hold. Crabs also move sideways across the court. Tennis players move sideways across the court like this. Crabs move sideways across the court like that. When we go into our forehand and backhand shots, we want the children's bodies to be sideways, so we're just incorporating an understanding of how our bodies sometimes have to be. The last thing is that the crab's eyes are always at the front of their head, so they always look forward to where they are. So, we always want the children to ensure they're focused on the tennis net or the tennis ball, whatever that focus point is. Is. So yeah, that that's tennis. But I use that analogy to try and get the children grasping. 

Going back to the literature side of things, the story we're talking about is quite generic. It's just about a child who gets into tennis, but we're looking at the tennis racket as a whole. 

What is the tennis racket?  we talk about it. What are these? These are the strings. What is this? This is the face. We hold the handle. The part is the frame, and I don't have to repeat it by week three or four of my lessons with the children. I have to point to the tennis racquet, and I say about what this is, and they'll say this is a tennis racquet. I'll point to the face. They said this is the face; how do we hold it? And they'll all show me. We hold it with our crab claws. We have it like a chopper, not like a frying pan. 

So, these are the tiny little words that come into play. The children relate to what those words are, and it is just them and already built-in skill without them realising it. I'm not gonna use the technical terms. I'm not gonna say it. We must hold it at a 90° angle facing downwards, pointing to the floor. Blah blah. We're using words. It's gonna help them to be able to do that straight away. And that's just something that I've picked up over the years. It has just been such a nice way to encourage stories and keywords. That's the literature side of things, is what I've.

Speaker 1

Again, your experience shows you avenues to develop your entrepreneurship, knowing that this literature is so important. You've described giving the children a label for something and then connecting it so they have it as a concept. If you tell them to look forward, but then they are 100% embodying that in their body, it's no longer just a word: it's a genuine concept. So, concepts are things like directionality. You're talking about going forward, going backwards, and going sideways. And the relationship between the whole and the parts. These are fundamental learning skills, aren't they for children? How they're going to think and how they're going to organise knowledge right into the future. And then the repetition is essential. You are embedding the information. I fully appreciate the literacy now. You've described it so well. And then when I go back to this list of the seven learning areas, you aren't only doing that literacy, you're doing the mathematics because all of that spatial stuff is mathematical. Then, the communication and the language.

And then I'm sure about the personal, social, and emotional development because they're working together. So, tell us a little bit about that as well.

Speaker 2

Yeah, the personal, social, and emotional are surprisingly easier to see and recognise than most other areas. The way that I teach my lessons, There's no competition at all. The only competition they have is within themselves. So every child is an individual. They're all going to be on their own different paths. Some might be older than others. 

It's them; their judgment is vital to their PE lessons.  Each child has a task or game with an end goal. For me, it's a particular task they're doing, and that child is developing independently. So, if they can't do something or they're doing something wrong, we will step in and say, right, well, what, what can we change? What are we doing? And then they're getting something from that, OK. They're understanding it differently. And if they go from doing something completely wrong or backwards to having just a little talk and chat and then doing something correctly, you can see within themselves that they know now, I know how to do it. And you can see that they're visibly happy with their own progress.

So you've got that personal side. Through the social side of things is just the fact that I do. All. My groups are mostly 12 for our three to five-year-olds and then eight children in a group for our two-to-threes. They're always in a group together anyway. So that I don't make the area too big. I don't make it too small. They're constantly having to be around each other regardless. A lot of the games I do are team games. We do lots of relay racing. We don’t do much turn-taking, but an element of turn-taking is involved. It is a big part of the sport that I try to implement, so it's working as a team. And it's building that social response. I always get the children cheering for their friends as they're doing something if they're not currently participating. It's bringing that bit of team morale in. 

The emotional side of it can work in both ways. You've got the success-driven emotion, so if they've done something and it's gone, well you can see they get pretty excited that emotion comes out, and they're enjoying it. And they like the emotion when they first turn up to PE lessons and they see the little mascots, they know exactly what sport they're doing. That's that exciting emotion. 

But then you also get the other side of the coin: the emotions of distress, sadness, and anger. If a child tries to do something, especially if they’re competitive and if they can't do something, they will get angry. And that's OK. That's an OK emotion to have. As long as we as educators can try to turn that into a positive outcome, we can use that angry emotion that they might be facing or that sad emotion that they might be facing to complete the task differently. We let them look at it from a new perspective. So, it's just building those characters.  

And the social, emotional, and personal are all character-building. If you were to take those three things, it's just rounding off that person's character, making them like a big ball of clay, and moulding them into the person they should be. I may be biased in saying this, but sports are the one thing that can build a character, no matter what sport, from swimming to gymnastics to teams. Things like rugby, boxing, and anything else you can think of. You cannot build a person's character better, in my own opinion, than suffering down the line of sport and exercise. But you have to have that positive relationship to it initially. Then we can go into the physical literacy side of things, which is an entirely different concept that, again, we could probably do an entire episode on physical literacy.

Speaker 1

Well, I'm a golfer, and I can tell you that you can tell a lot of people's character from when they play golf and when you play with them.

Speaker 2

I agree.

Speaker 1

I think this ability to understand emotion is key. Recognising that children can be excited, happy, and calm but also feel these huge emotions of frustration and anger. If they can start learning at this early age that there are different perspectives and ways of dealing with this, will they not be so much more competent later on in dealing with emotion? And this can have a massive impact on how they perform and their future life success.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And it's not just from a sports perspective, either. It's every element of education, social life, home life, and everything. You can build so much of that child from such a young age to make them understand. we're not talking about behaviour here. We're not talking about that. That's something completely different. That's something that comes in a different territory. But in terms of preparing that child to be well-rounded, you can do so much. There's so much more we can do. But the sports side of it, the sports side of physical education, brings out a different element you don't find anywhere else, which is so essential for this age.

Speaker 1

When you say this age, that brings me to another question because I think modern society struggles to get children out there and to be active, and it's having a lot of impact on their development. 

Speaker 2

Yeah, every nation's got its issues. I wouldn't know what the current problems are across the globe. But if I'm talking from a UK perspective, I know the big struggles. I’ll try not to talk post-pandemic. I'll try to speak as a whole. Obviously, since the post-pandemic, we've seen a massive rise in obesity levels and inactivity. Children and adults do not want to do that sort of stuff. There is the odd occasion where it's been the opposite. But the main issue I think we face is funding; it's money and budgets. That's the problem.  Every secondary school has a sports program. However, every primary school should have a full-time physical education or sports teacher for those children. Or a team or a department. But what happens is. It's an area that gets left behind. It's an area they believe is similar to early years, too. They feel physical development on that checklist. Yep, we've covered what is just left to happen. They think they don't need someone to come in and try to hone it, refine it, and make it better. That's the issue. If we're leaving it in our early years and going to a school in our next stage, our next foundation stage in primary school where we don't have someone driving that, it's left to the teachers. 

Then that's being left until probably 9-10- eleven years old until they reach secondary school level, where they're finally starting to get something. But it's too late. And you find most young, especially young girls, year seven-year eight-year nine, with body changes that they're going through, don't want to be frosted upon the first time doing any physical activity or exercise. They probably already hate the idea of it. So, by bringing it in at such a young age, we can change that mentality and understanding and get the children to understand it. I'm not necessarily fitter, but I'm enjoying it more. We can tackle the issue from early years into primary school, and if we can solve it, we can improve it.  

I don't know. I'm not a politician. I couldn't tell you the ins and outs or why it doesn't happen. But it might seem like I'm saying it is an easy fix. It's probably not, definitely not. but that's what I think the issue is.  It’s the fact that there's no consistency for all three stages we go through. Early to primary to secondary. If we were to fix it early on in the same way that we do with everything else. With food, with diet, with technology, with anything. if we're starting it at the youngest of ages, it's only gonna increase that child's health and well-being and better themselves by the time they get to that stage.  we do it with our children. Now we don't feed our children the worst food we can think of daily because we know that they will feel the repercussions when they get older. So, it should really be the same. Our education systems should have something in place from all stages of development leading up to adult life. This gives them that positive outlook on physical activity, and that's where physical literacy comes into play, from cradle to grave. That's the way I understand physical literacy. It's got to be that whole longevity, that whole lifelong outlook on exercise.

Speaker 1

I think your understanding of what you're doing in the early years makes you aware of core skills and foundational skills, starting very early and building on those. I take your point about starting right at the beginning very much. What are some of the strategies or some of the things that teachers and parents can do, given that they might not have a Josh Candy to hand any minute of the day, to help their children develop in this way?

Speaker 2

It's tough, it's tough. If we're talking from zero to five age, I think it's very hard to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do, no matter what that is from any level. I think there needs to be an opportunity for children to get the classes available to parents to take children down to opportunities that may or may not be present, such as local leisure centres. I tell many of my parents to take them to soft places, jungle gyms, or whatever they might be called around the world for the early ages. I'm not sure, but the soft fall place is what we call them. The big climbing apparatuses and the nets and the ropes. 

A child will be happy and quite content there for a good couple of hours, and the sheer amount of physical development that that child will be going through in that time is crucial. Swimming is such a lovely family social thing to do that is important not just from a life perspective but from a physical standpoint as well. I think that opening as many opportunity doors to that child as possible would be beneficial. We'll make them want to do things. I believe the worst thing we can do is let the children just be sedentary, and this isn't a jibe of parents in any way. Just sit at home and do nothing. 

But as a parent myself, I understand that there are definitely times when you can't help that if work coming on, you can't leave the house and the children have to sit there and instead of my two daughters beating each other up, we'll put a film on things like that. So there's just balance; it's finding balance. And I think when you get the opportunity to do so, if you have the chance to broaden the children's opportunities, it kind of eventually starts to rattle in. That's where the early years sectors come in. That's where your nurseries and education settings go when they go to nursery or school. They'll already have some form of OK if they don't use the buggy and they walk; they're already going to be a lot more developed. They won't be so tired when you try and take them out to do things like that. 

So, it's just tiny little things. If you try and do the little things at the beginning, they'll start to come into play. If the investment is there, I would like to be able to do things like I do with early as PE brings in someone in an external provider. or training up a current staff member who has a passion for doing that. or employing full-time like I used to be employed full-time by a nursery. Having someone there who has that passion to drive that sort of change. Again, that only has to be maybe one or two changes. it could be that every morning in your nursery, you do a get-up and shake-up dance or a little walk around. or anything. Just tiny, tiny little implementations that you can do. those little things will snowball, and it has such an enormous snowball effect that the progress a child can make in such a short amount of time is phenomenal. It starts to slow down once you get to 8, 9, 10, 11 years old. Those things of learning and the snowball effect starts to slow down. but at this age, you can do things so quickly, and you can build up those foundations quickly with little effort. The more effort you put in, the more rewards you'll get out and the better it will be. But you can do things that don't take such a drastic approach, in my opinion.

Speaker 1

You’ve described some big changes, but I'm also hearing you say rely a little bit on your own creativity. Make an obstacle course in your lounge room, get children to design their own obstacle courses, those sorts of things. And yeah, use your classroom as a way to start developing these things. 

I love those suggestions because there's such a strong relationship between physical movement and brain development, and the two are complementary. And the more we move, the more we learn. Learning is more integrated if we move. and it is something about having a balance between these things. you've also described containment.  I know parents are in a hurry, and it's hard. it's hard to get by in the morning. to get your kids into car, move around, and go through the supermarket. They’re in prams, they're in cars, they're in car seats, they in the trolley, and it's hard but to take them out of that containment, as you say, and give them that opportunity to walk, to run, to put their feet on the ground just. All of that adds up over time.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think it’s hard again, it's really hard for me to say.  I drive to work every day because of the distance that we have. I drop my daughters off at nursery school every morning can't change that. So, I can't be an advocate and say you must walk your children to school every day. You must cycle. I would never do that. The issue with policymakers is they will say, oh, you've got to cycle into work, you've got to do this, and you have to do that. It's not gonna be the case. I think it's Just finding little times. I finished work the other day, picked up my daughter from Nursery, went and picked up my other daughter from a holiday camp and then I took him to the park for literally 15 minutes where we've got a little like jungle train they walk through. And it was just a nice way for them at the end of the day, to burn off that last little bit of energy. it’s good because I've now come in and maybe a little bit later we can start to speed up that process of, of bedtime and and whatnot. And it is little things like that. It's just maybe trying something that you might not feel like you want to do at the end of a long day. The benefits are there and you're building something up for that child.

Speaker

Like.

Speaker 1

What is next for Josh Candy?

Speaker 2

Good question for me personally, where I've been on such a journey for the last seven years and doing things. Like this with the podcast. Of you, I hope. I haven't come across as arrogant or anything like that because it's not the intention. do what I really wanna do is, I love this industry so much now, and I've made this my passion.  and I've realised that there's such an opportunity. and the reason why I do it is for the children. My big goal for me is obviously to make early PE an established name in in delivering physical education to early years. To grow that naturally. I do not want to become the biggest chain in the world just so I can have an early retirement. 

That's not my purpose of doing this. I want to do it naturally. I want to get companies on board that share the same ethos. I want to network with people that understand. And want it to grow. I want to be there for the industry as a representation of what we can do so early PE’s showcasing how easy it is.  

I share my videos of what I do every week on my LinkedIn. If I tried to do it from a business perspective, I'd keep it all to myself. and I'd be like this is my secret. This is my little secret recipe here. I don't want anyone to know it, but that's not what I want to do. I wanna showcase the fact that look, this is how easy things can be. This is what I've been doing this week. This is what you can do. This is how you, as a practitioner or a setting, can change it, and obviously, I'm there then to give that support if needed. I think it is just putting the name out there. putting it as big as I can. I wanna do these books as well. I wanna get some books sorted for the early years age group that are zero to five related to sports for that particular age group. because they don't exist, if anyone can prove me wrong and then knows of any, then please feel free to send them my way. Cause I'd love to see them. 

I read the same book six times a day, four days a week, for about six sports. So, I know the books off by heart. I need some new sources. there isn't an end goal. I don't want there to be an end goal because I don't feel like that's why I've done what I've done. It is a passion of mine, and hopefully, it will come across today. You can take something from what I've spoken about. And what I share on my LinkedIn and what the company represents to take back yourself and implement it here and there. That's the end goal for me to get that name there. How quickly can I do that? I don't wanna be rushing. I want it to be very, very natural and I wanna enjoy it as well. I don't wanna be stressed every day and bogged down and then lose sight of why I've done what I've done. Continue to benefit the early years industry.

Speaker 1

Well, I think that is the perfect vision for you. You're a holistic educator, understanding across many levels, which you've shared with us today. And you will impact on creating children into holistic human beings. And I don't think education's more rewarding than that. And I wish you the most tremendous success in all of that, Josh. 

I always ask my interviewees if they have a quote. That resonates with them, and they'd like to share. Do you have one?

Speaker 2

I do. And it's a quote I have on my website, and it's a vital part of why. I feel like I've still got that burning passion to do what I do, and the quote is from George Bernard Shaw. And it says, ‘We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing’. And for me, I think that rounds it off beautifully. If you see me in my lessons, I'm amongst the children. I will still be that child within the moment. If we lose that fun at that moment, we grow old. And then we get miserable and sad. And then we ended up just sort of living. Yeah. Lovely quote. And that's what's on my website. On there.

Speaker 1

Well, to wrap up, that really captures your philosophy and approach to early years PE, and I really hope that you grow this business now, Josh. People will want to get hold of you. You've spoken about your LinkedIn profile, but not everyone's on the link. 10 Are you prepared to share your website details with us?

Speaker 2

Of course, you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I've just started a tic-toc because, you know, I've got to be down with the kids now as well. I've just started a tic-toc page as early as PE. Josh Candy's early years PE. and my website is earlyyearspe.co.uk. I've been sharing my content on LinkedIn for the last five years. I've used the hashtag early years PE or EYPE. not intentionally to get to this point, but it's worked out nicely. I'm just trying to make that our brand. So you should be able to find me with my name on all forms of social media and early asp.co.uk.

Speaker 1

Thank you. On behalf of all our listeners, I know they will benefit greatly from hearing you talk so passionately about what you do. Thank you so much, Josh, for attending this podcast today.

Speaker 2

Thank you so much for having me, Lili-Ann. It's been great. Listeners, take care. I hope you have a lovely day.