Vary activities so that children are introduced to different materials.
Plan activities that require collaboration.
Make materials easily accessible to all children, to ensure everybody can make choices.
Self-confidence and Self-esteem
Plan extra time for helping children in transition, such as when they move from one setting to another or between different groups in the same setting.
Provide role-play areas with a variety of resources reflecting diversity.
Making Relationships
Provide stability in staffing and in grouping of the children.
Provide time, space and materials for children to collaborate with one another in different ways, for example, building constructions.
Provide a role-play area resourced with materials reflecting children's family lives and communities.
Behaviour and Self-control
Set, explain and maintain clear, reasonable and consistent limits so that children can play and work feeling safe and secure.
Collaborate with children in creating explicit rules for the care of the environment.
Self-care
Plan opportunities for children to take the initiative in their learning.
Provide means for children to keep track of, and share, their achievements.
Build on children's ideas to plan new experiences that present challenges.
Sense of Community
Provide activities and opportunities for children to share experiences and knowledge from different parts of their lives with each other.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Planning and resourcing
Language for Communication
Encourage children to express their needs and feelings in words.
Provide opportunities for children whose home language is other than English, to use that language.
Find out from parents how children make themselves understood at home; confirm which is their preferred language.
Set up a listening area where children can enjoy rhymes and stories.
Introduce 'rhyme time' bags containing books to take home and involve parents in rhymes and singing games. Ask parents to record regional variations of songs and rhymes in other languages.
Introduce, alongside books, story props, such as pictures, puppets and objects, to encourage children to retell stories and to think about how the characters feel.
Help children to build their vocabulary by extending the range of their experiences.
Ensure that all practitioners use correct grammar.
The story tent - In a busy reception class, a child and a practitioner take a quiet moment to explore a book.[transcript]
You can watch the video via modem or slow / fast / superfast broadband connections. If you are behind a network firewall, why not click here to view a flash file of the video. You do need to have the flash plugin.
Language for Thinking
Set up shared experiences that children can reflect upon, for example, visits, cooking, or stories that can be re-enacted.
Help children to predict and order events coherently, by providing props and materials that encourage children to re-enact, using talk and action.
Linking Sounds and Letters
When making up alliterative jingles, draw attention to the similarities in sounds at the beginning of words and emphasise the initial sound, for example, "mmmmummy", "shshshshadow", "K-K-K-K-Katy".
Reading
Create an attractive book area where children and adults can enjoy books together.
Provide some simple poetry, song, fiction and non-fiction books. Include books containing photographs of the children that can be read by adults and that children can begin to 'read' by themselves.
Create an environment rich in print where children can learn about words, for example, using names and labels.
Introduce children to books and other materials that provide information or instructions. Carry out activities using instructions, such as reading a recipe to make a cake.
Ensure access to stories for all children by using a range of visual cues and story props.
Plan to include home language and bilingual story sessions by involving qualified bilingual adults, as well as enlisting the help of parents.
Writing
Provide activities during which children will experiment with writing, for example, leaving a message.
Include opportunities for writing during role-play and other activities.
Handwriting
Provide opportunities for large shoulder movements, for example, swirling ribbons in the air, batting balls suspended on rope and painting.
Encourage children to make shapes like circles and zig-zags in the air and in their play, for example, with sand and water and brushes.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Planning and resourcing
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Give children a reason to count, for example, by asking them to select enough wrist bands for three friends to play with the puppets.
Enable children to note the 'missing set', for example, "There are none left" when sharing things out.
Provide number labels for children to use, for example, by putting a number label on each bike and a corresponding number on each parking space.
Include counting money and change in role-play games.
Calculating
Create opportunities for children to separate objects into unequal groups as well as equal groups.
Provide story props that children can use in their play, for example, varieties of fruit and several baskets like Handa's in the story Handa's Surprise by Eileen Browne.
Shape, Space and Measures
Have large and small blocks and boxes available for construction both indoors and outdoors.
Play games involving children positioning themselves inside, behind, on top and so on.
Provide rich and varied opportunities for comparing length, weight and time.
Use stories such as Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins to talk about distance and stimulate discussion about non-standard units and the need for standard units.
Show pictures that have symmetry or pattern and talk to children about them.
A bed for a giant - In a reception class, the practitioner supports a child to solve problems by thinking about the size of a giant's bed, and helping him learn new skills about measuring. [transcript]
You can watch the video via modem or slow / fast / superfast broadband connections. If you are behind a network firewall, why not click here to view a flash file of the video. You do need to have the flash plugin.
Talking about a monster - In a reception class, the practitioner supports a child to talk about the features of his 'monster' using language such as long, tall, taller. [transcript]
You can watch the video via modem or slow / fast / superfast broadband connections. If you are behind a network firewall, why not click here to view a flash file of the video. You do need to have the flash plugin.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Planning and resourcing
Exploration and Investigation
Use the local area for exploring both the built and the natural environment.
Provide opportunities to observe things closely through a variety of means, including magnifiers and photographs.
Designing and Making
Provide ideas and stimuli for children, for example, photographs, books, visits and close observation of buildings.
Provide a range of tools, for example, scissors, hole punch, stapler, junior hacksaw, glue spreader, rolling pin, cutter, knife, grater, and encourage children to handle them carefully and use their correct names.
ICT
When out in the locality, ask children to help to press the button at the pelican crossing, or speak into an intercom to tell somebody you have come back to the setting.
Time
Plan time when children can discuss past events in their lives, such as what they did in the holidays or what happened when they went to have a splinter removed from their hand.
Ask parents to share photographs from home that show things such as a sunflower that their child took home from school in a pot, which has now grown taller than them.
Ensure the full participation of children learning English as an additional language by offering additional visual support and encouraging children to use their home language.
Place
Plan time for visits to the local area.
Provide play maps and small-world equipment for children to create their own environments.
Communities
Plan time to listen to children wanting to talk about significant events and give them time to formulate thoughts and words to express feelings. Provide the support of adults who share languages other than English with children.
Provide ways of preserving memories of special events, for example, making a book, collecting photographs, tape recording, drawing and writing.
Invite children and families with experiences of living in other countries to bring in photographs and objects from their home cultures including those from family members living in different areas of the UK and abroad.
Physical Development
Planning and resourcing
Movement and Space
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
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
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.
Creative Development
Planning and resourcing
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Ensure that there is enough time for children to express their thoughts, ideas and feelings in a variety of ways, such as in role-play, by painting and by responding to music.
Encourage children to discuss and appreciate the beauty around them in nature and the environment.
Exploring Media and Materials
Introduce vocabulary to enable children to talk about their observations and experiences, for example, 'smooth', 'shiny', 'rough', 'prickly', 'flat', 'patterned', 'jagged', 'bumpy', 'soft' and 'hard'.
Provide a wide range of materials, resources and sensory experiences to enable children to explore colour, texture and space. Document the processes children go through to create their own 'work'.
Provide a place where work in progress can be kept safely. Talk to children about where they can see models and plans in the environment, such as at the local planning office, in the town square, or at the new apartments down the road.
Creating Music and Dance
Provide experiences that involve all the senses and movement.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
Offer a story stimulus by suggesting an imaginary event or set of circumstances, for example, "This bear has arrived in the post. He has a letter pinned to his jacket. It says 'Please look after this bear'. We should look after him in our room. How can we do that?".
