Strategies babies use to indicate likes and dislikes.
Babies' confidence in exploring what they can do.
Babies' play with their own feet, fingers, and toys placed near them.
Self-confidence and Self-esteem
The sounds, words and actions that babies use to show feelings such as pleasure, excitement, frustration or anger.
How babies show they like being close to adults.
How babies express affection.
How babies look at you to check your reaction when they are not sure of something.
How babies seek emotional reassurance when they are tired, stressed or frustrated.
How babies identify a favourite toy and use it to comfort themselves.
How babies show they prefer to be with familiar rather than unfamiliar people.
Round and round the garden - In a childminder's home, the childminder and baby have fun, sharing words actions and vocalisations. [transcript]
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Making Relationships
The skills that babies use to make contact, such as making eye contact, inclining their heads, wiggling their toes, smiling, vocalising or banging.
How babies react to an audience.
How babies express a range of emotions.
Babies' responses to other people's feelings, for example, looking concerned if they hear crying or looking excited if they hear a familiar happy voice.
In what circumstances babies become distressed.
How and when babies express awareness or interest in what other people are doing.
Behaviour and Self-control
Babies' responses to being praised when they do something you ask, such as loosening their grasp on your hair or face.
Self-care
How babies show what they want.
Sense of Community
Babies' responses when they know you have 'heard' them, and the personal signs, words or gestures they use to communicate.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Look, listen and note
Language for Communication
The sounds babies enjoy making and listening to.
The signs or words babies use, noting any words in home languages, to communicate what they want, like or dislike.
Babies' developing vocabulary in their mother tongue, as well as English, noting which words are in English and which are in the home language. Note in which circumstances the different languages are used.
Where babies look when you speak to them about objects and people nearby and when you point at the things and people you are talking about.
Examples of babies learning to play their part in a conversation. Do they stop vocalising when you are talking and wait for their 'turn'?
How babies watch and listen to other people who are talking.
How babies react when their name is called.
The different ways babies let you know that they understand what you say to them.
The ways in which babies respond when you look at a picture book together and you talk about the items on the page.
How babies use voice, gesture and words to attract attention, ask for things and refuse things.
Occasions when babies begin to point.
How babies participate in simple routines such as waving 'bye bye'.
Language for Thinking
The ways in which babies show you they have understood.
Linking Sounds and Letters
The wide variety of sounds and words a baby produces.
The ways in which babies show they are learning to locate the direction from which sounds and voices are coming.
How babies respond when they hear a familiar voice or when their name is called.
Examples of how babies respond to singing and rhymes.
How babies imitate the sounds and intonation patterns of speech they hear around them.
The range of speech sounds used by babies as they begin to babble.
Reading
How babies' responses develop as they learn to anticipate and join in with finger and word play.
Writing
Babies' interest in marks, for example, the marks they make when they rub a rusk round the tray of a feeding chair.
Handwriting
The movements and sounds babies make as they explore materials such as musical instruments, paint, dough, glue and the space around them.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Look, listen and note
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Preferences for particular rhymes and action songs that relate to number.
The pictures of familiar things, in books, that babies recognise and point to, such as a ball or a teddy.
Calculating
Babies' interest in looking for things that disappear from sight.
Babies' persistence in trying to achieve something they have managed before, such as lifting the lid on a box that has previously popped open.
Shape, Space and Measures
Instances of babies' investigation of objects and space such as looking for hidden objects or putting things in and taking them out of containers.
How they hold out their arms wide to gather up a big teddy and bring hands together to pick up a small ball.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Look, listen and note
Exploration and Investigation
Babies' interests and the ways in which they investigate and manipulate objects.
The strategies babies use to explore objects using all their senses, such as shaking, hitting, looking, feeling, tasting, mouthing, pulling, turning and poking. Is their approach systematic?
How a baby indicates they are beginning to understand cause and effect, for example, by repeating actions to make things happen again.
How babies use objects to make noise.
How children react when a new toy is introduced to them.
How babies show they are beginning to understand that some objects belong together or can be put inside one another.
How a baby responds to pictures in books.
The different ways babies show they are learning to anticipate what might happen next.
Strategies babies use to look for objects that have fallen out of sight.
Strategies babies use as they begin to experiment such as trying something, reflecting on it and then trying something else.
Indications that babies recognise objects and toys.
How babies respond when they see an image in a mirror.
The different ways babies show that they are beginning to understand what objects are used for, for example, by putting a toy telephone to their ear.
Designing and Making
How babies handle and arrange objects such as blocks or bricks.
ICT
How babies begin to explore technology in toys and personal items, for example, pressing a button or lifting the spout on a drinking cup.
Time
Children's anticipation of the events of the day.
Place
How babies explore space, objects and features of the environment.
Communities
Differences in the ways that babies respond to and communicate with adults and other children.
Physical Development
Look, listen and note
Movement and Space
The way young babies coordinate actions to move around the space on their feet, bottoms, backs, tummies and hands and knees.
How babies like to move.
What babies like to try to reach for and play with, and the skills they develop, such as pulling to stand and walking.
The skills babies build up as they learn to crawl and then pull themselves up to a standing position from sitting. What motivates them to want to move?
How babies use furniture and other objects to support their first steps and what encourages them to become more confident walkers.
Examples of why children begin to carry things with them as they walk.
How babies begin to explore stairs and what motivates them to want to go up or down.
Health and Bodily Awareness
How babies' behaviour changes as they get tired and require sleep.
The ways in which babies indicate that they need help.
Feeding:
How babies begin to open their mouths to take food from a spoon.
The range of food (consider textures and tastes) that a baby accepts.
How babies begin to grasp finger foods and bring them to their mouths.
How babies learn to use a spoon and sipper cup to feed themselves.
Sleeping:
How often babies need a nap during the day and how this changes over time.
Washing:
How babies cooperate and participate when being washed.
Toileting:
How babies cooperate when their nappy is being changed.
Using Equipment and Materials
Babies' actions such as clapping, pointing, grasping and dropping things.
The ways babies pat, pinch and grasp sand, paste or paint.
How young babies begin to release toys from their grasp and drop things.
How babies play with containers and begin to put one thing inside another.
How babies explore small objects, such as crumbs.
Creative Development
Look, listen and note
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Young children's favourite materials, music, lights and aromas.
Exploring Media and Materials
What babies like to make marks in and the tools they use to make them.
How babies move their whole bodies as they explore media.
Creating Music and Dance
The different ways babies move in response to sounds, for example, patting the floor when on their tummy, flexing and relaxing their legs, or opening and closing their palms.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
The way a young baby may join in with you, moving their head or making sounds as you say, for example, "The dog went woof, woof".
