Move freely with pleasure and confidence in a range of ways, such as slithering, shuffling, rolling, crawling, walking, running, jumping, skipping, sliding and hopping.
Use movement to express feelings.
Negotiate space successfully when playing racing and chasing games with other children, adjusting speed or changing direction to avoid obstacles.
Sit up, stand up and balance on various parts of the body.
Demonstrate the control necessary to hold a shape or fixed position.
Operate equipment by means of pushing and pulling movements.
Mount stairs, steps or climbing equipment using alternate feet.
Negotiate an appropriate pathway when walking, running or using a wheelchair or other mobility aids, both indoors and outdoors.
Judge body space in relation to spaces available when fitting into confined spaces or negotiating openings and boundaries.
Show respect for other children's personal space when playing among them.
Persevere in repeating some actions or attempts when developing a new skill.
Collaborate in devising and sharing tasks, including those which involve accepting rules.
Walks upstairs using alternating feet, one foot per step.
Walks downstairs, two feet to each step while carrying a toy.
Jumps down a single step.
Negotiates obstacles when running and pushing toys.
Walks backwards, forwards and sideways.
Walks forward on a straight line.
Rides tricycle using pedals.
Can walk on tiptoe.
Kicks ball forcibly.
Can stand momentarily on one foot when shown.
How children move enthusiastically, using their arms and legs in a spontaneous dance, or shaking their bodies in time to music, when they are sad, happy or excited.
Children's increasing confidence in what they can do and their enjoyment of physical activities.
Some of the strategies children find to avoid banging into one another, and objects, as they negotiate space.
Children's skill development, deciding if it is exploratory and experimental or repetitive, and whether they are ready for a new challenge.
Efforts to try something new and persevere at a skill.
The ideas that children suggest to make things 'fair'.
Children's developing confidence and competence walking up and down stairs.
Playing outdoors - In the outdoor area of a reception class, most of the children are involved in physical play and the practitioner joins in with a group who are pretending they are on boats. [transcript]
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Teach skills which will help children to keep themselves safe, for example, responding rapidly to signals including visual signs and notes of music.
Encourage children to move with controlled effort, and use associated vocabulary such as 'strong', 'firm', 'gentle', 'heavy', 'stretch', 'reach', 'tense' and 'floppy'.
Use music to create moods and talk about how people move when they are sad, happy or cross.
Lead imaginative movement sessions based on children's current interests such as space travel, zoo animals or shadows.
Motivate children to be active through games such as follow the leader.
Talk about why children should take care when moving freely, and help them to remember some simple rules to remind them how to move about without endangering themselves or others.
Praise children's efforts when they consider others or collaborate in tasks.
Encourage children to persevere through praise, guidance or instruction when success is not immediate.
Use singing, music and movement games to reinforce understanding of different parts of the body and body positions. Try games such as 'Simon Says... ' and songs such as 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and 'If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands'.
Begin to introduce the ideas of left and right. Use a sticker or a bangle to mark one hand.
Demonstrate how to move backwards and practise by dancing (try the 'Hokey-cokey'), holding hands and then reducing support.
Encourage children to jump off low steps into your arms and later on to the floor.
At this age, children may enjoy learning to walk along low walls or benches and jumping off the end. Give support to begin with but balance will improve with practice.
Play games that involve reaching up high to encourage children to stand on their toes. Challenge children to walk as quietly as possible on crinkly paper, leaves or pebbles. This also helps children to walk on tiptoe. You may need to hold hands initially but the children's balance will improve with practice.
Demonstrate how to push the pedals on a tricycle and encourage children to do this independently.
Plan opportunities for children to tackle a range of levels and surfaces including flat and hilly ground, grass, pebbles, asphalt, smooth floors and carpets.
Ensure that equipment is appropriate to the size and weight of children in the group and offers challenges to children at different levels of development.
Plan activities where children can move in different ways and at different speeds.
Provide balancing challenges, such as a straight or curved chalk line for children to follow.
Mark out boundaries for some activities, such as games involving wheeled toys or balls, so that children can more easily regulate their own activities.
Provide sufficient equipment for children to share, so that waiting to take turns does not spoil enjoyment.
Provide construction materials such as crates, blocks or boxes to create personal and shared spaces and dens.
Take photographs to put in a book about 'Me and the things I can do'.
Health and Bodily Awareness
Show awareness of own needs with regard to eating, sleeping and hygiene.
Often need adult support to meet those needs.
Show awareness of a range of healthy practices with regard to eating, sleeping and hygiene.
Observe the effects of activity on their bodies.
Feeding:
Eats individual pieces of food from tub or box with lid.
Able to blow, for example, candles or when cooling food.
Pours drink from jug with some spillage.
Eats with a fork and a spoon.
Beginning to use a knife for spreading.
Washing:
Helps wash self and own hair.
Helps dry self after washing.
Uses taps on hand basin.
Washes and dries own hands.
Turns taps on and off.
Brushes own teeth with help.
Blows nose when tissue is held up.
Toileting:
Asks for toilet using voice, gesture or action, for example, leads adult to toilet and asks verbally or makes a sign.
Mostly dry during the day with occasional accidents.
Usually able to control bowel with occasional accidents.
Pulls down own pants when using the toilet.
Flushes toilet with support.
Waits to be wiped after using toilet or potty.
Children's recognition of their own needs, such as when they tell you their lace is undone and need help to fasten it.
The ways children demonstrate understanding of healthy practices such as by saying they need a tissue, or putting a cup in the sink ready to be washed.
Children's understanding that they need a rest or a drink after a burst of activity.
Feeding:
Children's growing confidence using a range of different eating utensils.
How children pour liquid from a jug into cups.
Washing:
How children learn to wash and dry their own hands and face, including turning on the taps at a wash basin for themselves.
When children learn to blow their noses if a tissue is held up.
Toileting:
The different ways children ask for the toilet using voice, gestures or actions.
The pattern of children's learning as they become mostly dry during the day and later, reliably dry and clean.
How children behave in the toilet. Can they flush the toilet for themselves and do they wait to be wiped?
Talk to children about why you encourage them to rest when they are tired or why they need to wear wellingtons when it is muddy outdoors.
Create opportunities for moving towards independence, for example, have hand-washing facilities safely within reach, and support children in making healthy choices about the food they eat.
Encourage children to notice the changes in their bodies after exercise, such as their heart beating faster.
Provide a cosy place with a cushion and a soft light where a child can rest quietly if they need to.
Plan so that children can be active in a range of ways, including while using a wheelchair.
Be aware that physical activity is important in maintaining good health and in guarding against children becoming overweight or obese in later life.
Using Equipment and Materials
Engage in activities requiring hand-eye coordination.
Use one-handed tools and equipment.
Show increasing control over clothing and fastenings.
Show increasing control in using equipment for climbing, scrambling, sliding and swinging.
Demonstrate increasing skill and control in the use of mark-making implements, blocks, construction sets and small-world activities.
Understand that equipment and tools have to be used safely.
Can build tower of ten or more cubes.
Imitates making a train of cubes.
Threads large beads onto shoelace.
Cuts paper with scissors.
Holds pencil near point between first two fingers and thumb and uses it with good control.
Writes an 'X' form and a horizontal line.
Imitates drawing a circle.
Draws spontaneous and unrecognisable forms.
Draws person with head and one or two other features or parts.
The ways children manage to make things work successfully, such as when they wheel a buggy, turn a whisk or 'vacuum' the carpet.
The things that inspire children to want to create or construct.
The variety of skills children use to manipulate materials and objects, such as picking up, releasing, threading and posting objects.
Children's strategies, efforts and achievements in fastening and unfastening items such as containers, clothing and cupboards.
Children's skills in fixing, creating play worlds and using materials and equipment safely and appropriately.
Teach children the skills they need to use equipment safely, for example, cutting with scissors or using tools.
Check children's clothing for safety, for example, ensuring that toggles on coats and hoods cannot get tangled in tricycle wheels.
Introduce the vocabulary of direction, including, where appropriate, 'clockwise' and 'anticlockwise'.
Match pictures with objects and play with pictures and objects that can be sorted into two groups by size, shape or colour. Socks (big ones for adults and small ones for children) or cutlery work well.
Help children to develop their manual dexterity by showing them how to unwrap small objects covered in paper. Help them to use scissors, too – for example, to make collages from things you find outdoors together.
Encourage children to enjoy scribbling using thick pens and paintbrushes. Some children will enjoy copying a line across or up and down a sheet of paper or copying a large circle.
Show children how to make marks in dough and feel the marks they have made.
Make equipment available and accessible to all children for the whole of the day or session, if possible.
Provide activities that give children the opportunity and motivation to practise manipulative skills, for example, cooking, painting and playing instruments.
Provide opportunities for children to sometimes use all their fingers or the whole hand, for example with finger-paints or cornflour, and sometimes use just one finger, for example when making patterns in damp sand or paint.
Provide objects that can be handled safely, including small-world toys, construction sets, threading and posting toys, dolls' clothes and material for collage.
Acknowledgements
Disclaimer
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