Sally Player, Foundation Stage leader at Quilters Infant School in Billericay, Essex, urges teachers to adopt a creative approach to ensure all new children develop a love of reading, and recommends resources such as 100 High Frequency Wordcards.
Explore Quentin Blake's sense of fun and inspire children to experiment with words. Challenge them to write their own rhymes and have fun creating new adventures for popular characters.
The books of Tony Ross are packed with humour and misdeeds that are engaging to young children. Use them to develop Communication and Language skills that involve attentive listening and self-expression.
Bringing old and young together for meaningful interactions is now proving to have many benefits – not just for children and the elderly, but for society as a whole. Stephen and Denise Burke explain how they are working to maximise these benefits.
What is children's favourite – a cafe with healthy snacks or a pizza restaurant? Invite them to role-play their favourite eateries and support them to use new vocabulary and learn about the world.
In part two of her series exploring how communication skills link to wellbeing, Paula Brown challenges stereotypical notions to do with the extrovert and weighs the cognitive and emotional benefits of silence.
In the part two of her series exploring high quality provision for babies and children, Yasmin Mukadam looks at the importance of them being actively involved in planning their own learning experiences.
Wonderfully natural and inclusive, sensory exploration leads to children's self-expression and wellbeing. Give them time to immerse themselves fully and observe how they go with the flow.
National Gardening Week is an excellent opportunity to showcase to the local community what you do in your setting to grow and use produce, and to encourage a healthy and productive outdoor experience.
In the third article in her series on role-play, Judith Harries focuses on the activity of shopping, giving children creative scope to open up their very own shop and extend their understanding of the world.
Introduce children to the excitement of discovering ‘hidden things’ and link picture books with a discovery theme to events in their own life. Can they understand how one clue leads to another?
Make the most of the warm and sunny days of summer to introduce the topic of holidays and travel, and organise a variety of outdoor activities, including water and sand play, picnics, sports and trips.
Try these ideas for using resources to create tangible ‘number frames’ from one to ten. Children can have fun engaging with number physically while developing key mathematical thinking skills.
Moving to music delivers the feel good factor and when children make up their own dances they have fun working as a team, listening to each other’s ideas and remembering sequences of moves.
Getting involved with National Pet month provides a great way to educate children about the care and characteristics of household pets. While keeping pets in an early years setting is not generally advisable, there are lots of ways to build on children’s natural enthusiasm for them through books, role-play, small world play and discussion.
Winter is nearly over and if you’ve recently done an audit of your outdoor space, you might now be thinking about giving your mud kitchen a revamp, and introducing some new resources. If you haven’t yet set up a mud kitchen, now is definitely the time to start planning one.
Now is the time for children to harvest a range of exciting new natural objects, including catkins, blossom, dandelions, twigs and leaves – to take to the mud kitchen and have fun mixing them into magic potions.
Support children to extend their conversations and ideas while they are busy at the sand play area. As a shared place to play it provides fantastic opportunities for building confidence in speaking.
The EasyPeasy app engages families and children with game ideas and supports children’s social and emotional development and school readiness, according to a research trial. Sal McKeown explains.
Revisit your sand trays with these new ideas to promote concentration, hand-to-eye co-ordination and ne motor skills. Children can also get to grips with how tools can effect changes to materials.
Playing outdoors with friends is a perfect way to boost communication skills and these simple games are easy to set up. Children will enjoy sharing and talking about their tactile, sensory experiences.
Judith Harries’ series focusing on the best-loved and most widely acclaimed picture books has been steadily growing in the last six months. Here we round up some of the titles she has recently focused on with ideas for enjoying them and maximising their potential for learning.
Find out how one setting sent ‘borrow bags’ home with children to help parents understand how they could support their ‘fundamental movements’ as a precursor to skills used in games and specific sports.
A project in Walsall highlights how practitioners are successfully building upon children’s favoured schemes and schema to build in new challenges, extend learning and improve EYFS outcomes.
Nick Sharratt is a prolific children’s author and illustrator famous for his rhyming text and colourful illustrations. The following activities use his work to develop children’s communication and language skills.