How young babies begin to explore their own movements and the environment in individual ways.
How babies respond to adults and children.
Self-confidence and Self-esteem
How young babies respond to attention, such as making eye contact or vocalising.
Young babies' body language when their needs have been met.
The circumstances in which babies will play by themselves when people are nearby to watch over them.
The people babies like to be with.
How babies respond to strangers and unfamiliar events.
How and when babies make eye contact with you.
The ways in which babies show they like to be with particular people.
How babies behave when their parent leaves at the beginning of a session and when they return.
Making Relationships
The sounds and facial expressions young babies make in response to affectionate attention from their parent or key person.
Ways in which young babies respond to, or mimic, their key person's facial expressions or movements.
How young babies' behaviour changes in response to what other people do or say.
The way in which young babies cry to attract attention when they are hungry, angry or in pain.
How babies respond to being calmed.
The circumstances in which young babies look at other people's faces.
How patterns of looking and eye contact change over time and how long babies maintain eye contact with adults.
Occasions when babies gaze at adults and how they do so.
How young babies respond when you pick them up and cuddle them.
What makes babies smile or laugh.
How young babies react if they are left on their own.
Occasions that babies begin to enjoy and participate in interactive games such as peek-a-boo.
Behaviour and Self-control
What soothes individual babies and helps them to relax.
Self-care
Young babies' hunger patterns and responses to their food.
Sense of Community
How young babies show their pleasure or interest in different situations.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Look, listen and note
Language for Communication
Responses to your communication, for example movement, attentiveness to the speaker, and sounds from the home language and English for a child learning more than one language.
The different ways babies communicate - such as gurgling when happy.
How young babies tell you that they are tired, hungry, angry or in pain.
The things you do that seem to encourage young babies to vocalise more.
Where young babies direct their visual attention. Do they look at you when you talk to them? Are they beginning to look where you are looking to understand what you say?
How young babies begin to use gesture, eye contact and facial expression purposefully to make contact and hold your attention.
The range of speech sounds made by young babies as they begin to babble.
Language for Thinking
How babies listen to, concentrate on or gaze intently at things that catch their interest
Linking Sounds and Letters
The sounds and signs babies make.
How young babies respond to different tones of voice used by adults speaking to them.
Examples of young babies being calmed by soft speech or song.
The range of sounds young babies make.
Reading
Responses that tell you a young baby is listening.
Writing
The random marks young babies make in food.
Handwriting
How young babies fix their gaze on objects or on their own feet or fists.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Look, listen and note
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Responses to people and objects.
The attention that young babies give to changes in the quantity of objects or images they see, hear or experience.
Calculating
How they enjoy games when objects are shown, then hidden away.
Shape, Space and Measures
Babies' explorations of space through their movements, for example, by rolling from back to front.
How babies begin to be aware of distance, as they grasp and reach out.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Look, listen and note
Exploration and Investigation
How young babies use their senses to investigate such things as your face, your hair, a rattle.
How young babies show their interest in objects and people that move nearby.
How young babies begin to explore objects by touching them, looking at them and by placing them in their mouths.
How babies show enjoyment when they listen to music, rattles and other toys that make sounds.
How babies react when something disappears from view.
Examples of young babies reaching out for things that they want.
Designing and Making
The objects that interest and engage babies' attention.
ICT
Which toys and resources interest babies.
Time
The sounds, sights and actions that interest young babies, for example, seeing a bottle, hearing bath water running.
Place
The movements that young babies make as they find out about their environment.
Communities
How young babies respond to your attention.
The attachments babies make to special people.
Physical Development
Look, listen and note
Movement and Space
How young babies begin to explore through their bodily movements.
The physical skills that young babies use to make contact with people and objects.
How young babies learn to lift their heads and later, hold their heads steady.
Examples of when young babies try to move their heads to look at the things that interest them.
Times when babies begin to be able to hold their own bodies and heads steady when in a sitting position.
Why babies want to move and how they learn to roll from side to side and then from front to back.
Health and Bodily Awareness
Young babies' hunger patterns and how they regulate the speed and intensity with which they suck.
How they show they are relaxed when they feel safe and cared for.
How babies open their mouths for a bottle and close their mouths around the teat.
How babies suck and coordinate sucking and swallowing.
How regular a baby's feeding pattern is throughout the day.
How babies put their hands on their bottle when feeding.
How babies establish a regular pattern of sleeping throughout the day.
Using Equipment and Materials
The way young babies' eyes follow the movements of their fingers and toes.
How young babies grasp and clutch at anything in reach.
How young babies begin to reach out towards things in which they are interested.
How young babies use their hands and mouths to explore objects.
Ways in which young babies begin to explore different textures.
How young babies learn to hold first one object and then more than one object.
Creative Development
Look, listen and note
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Expressions of emotion shown through the movements of fingers, arms and bodies.
Exploring Media and Materials
The way young babies respond when they touch or feel something such as warm milk, or a fluffy toy.
Creating Music and Dance
The voices, sounds and music, such as lullabies, that young babies respond to.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
How a baby is pleased to see a stripy bee soft toy, or a colourful snake that crackles when it is squeezed.
