Place mirrors where babies can see their own reflection. Talk to them about what they see.
Provide choices of different vegetables and fruit at snack time.
Allow enough space for babies to move, roll, stretch and explore.
Faces in the mirror - In a nursery, a practitioner and a child look at their faces together in a mirror. [transcript]
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Self-confidence and Self-esteem
Have resources including picture books and stories that focus on a range of emotions, such as 'I am happy'.
Making Relationships
At times of transition (such as shift changes) make sure staff greet and say goodbye to babies and their carers. This helps to develop secure and trusting three-way relationships.
Behaviour and Self-control
Share information with parents to create consistency between home and setting so that babies learn about boundaries.
Self-care
Keep toys and comforters in areas that are easy for babies to locate.
Sense of Community
Plan opportunities for talking together in quiet places both indoors and outdoors.
Work with staff, parents and children to promote an anti-discriminatory and anti-bias approach to care and education.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Planning and resourcing
Language for Communication
Communicate with parents to exchange and update information about babies' personal words.
Display lists of words from different home languages, and invite parents and other adults to contribute. Include languages such as Romany and Creole, since seeing their languages reflected in the setting will encourage all parents to feel involved and valued.
Language for Thinking
Create an environment which invites responses from babies and adults, for example, touching, smiling, smelling, feeling, listening, exploring, describing and sharing.
Linking Sounds and Letters
Find out from parents the words that children use for things which are important to them, such as "dodie" for dummy, remembering to extend this question to home languages. Explain that strong foundations in a home language support the development of English.
Reading
Discover from parents the copying games that their babies enjoy, and use these as the basis for your play.
Writing
Encourage babies to make marks in paint or with thick crayons.
Handwriting
Plan a range of activities that encourage large and fine motor skills, such as throwing and kicking balls, riding push-along toys, feeding the guinea pigs.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Planning and resourcing
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Collect number rhymes which are repetitive and are related to children's actions and experiences, for example, 'Peter Hammers with One Hammer'.
Use song and rhymes during personal routines, for example, 'Two Little Eyes to Look Around', pointing to their eyes, one by one.
Collect number and counting rhymes from a range of cultures and in other languages. This will benefit all children and will give additional support for children learning English as an additional language.
Calculating
Provide lift-the-flap books to show something hidden from view.
Provide a variety of interesting displays for babies to see when they are looking around them, looking up at the ceiling or peering into a corner.
Shape, Space and Measures
Provide a range of objects of various textures and weights in treasure baskets to excite and encourage babies' interests.
Look at books showing objects such as a big truck and a little truck; or a big cat and a small kitten.
Use story props to support all children and particularly those learning English as an additional language.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Planning and resourcing
Exploration and Investigation
Plan varied arrangements of equipment and materials that can be used with babies in a variety of ways to maintain interest and provide challenges.
Designing and Making
Provide a range of resources that babies can use in their play that encourage their interest in balancing and building things.
ICT
Have available robust resources with knobs, flaps, keys or shutters.
Time
Ask parents about significant events in their babies' day and how these are talked about, for example, "boboes" for sleep or bedtime, "din-din" for dinner time.
Place
Display and talk about photographs of babies' favourite places.
Communities
Collect and share some stories and songs that parents and babies use at home.
Physical Development
Planning and resourcing
Movement and Space
Provide novelty in the environment that encourages babies to use all of their senses and move indoors and outdoors.
Offer low-level equipment so that babies can pull up to a standing position.
Provide tunnels, slopes and low-level steps to stimulate and challenge toddlers.
Make toys easily accessible for children to reach and fetch.
Plan space to encourage free movement.
Health and Bodily Awareness
Provide a comfortable, accessible place where babies can rest or sleep when they want to.
Plan alternative activities for babies who do not need sleep at the same time as others do.
Provide safe surroundings in which young children have freedom to move as they want, while being kept safe by watchful adults.
Using Equipment and Materials
Provide resources that stimulate babies to handle and manipulate things, for example, toys with buttons to press or books with flaps to open.
Use gloop (cornflour and water) in small trays so that babies can enjoy putting fingers into it and lifting them out.
Creative Development
Planning and resourcing
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Vary sensory experiences by placing herbs such as basil, parsley or sage in muslin bags for babies to squeeze or catch with their fingers.
Exploring Media and Materials
Place big sheets of plastic or paper on the floor so that babies can be near or crawl on to it to make marks, or add materials using large motor movements, sprinkling, throwing or spreading paint, glue, torn paper or other materials.
Creating Music and Dance
Have a range of puppets that can glide along the table, or dance around on the end of a fist in time to some lively music.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
Use your face as a resource when you play pretend games.
