5 Ways to Enhance Your Mud Kitchen this Autumn

Autumn is a wonderful season, full of so many learning opportunities for children as they connect with nature. This blog posts explores 5 ways you can easily enhance your mud kitchen this autumn to make the most of the season. Autumn provides us with many treasures that can make it fun as we explore, play and learn in the mud kitchen.

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1.  Add autumnal loose parts to the mud kitchen

Autumn provides lots of natural loose parts that can provide open-ended learning opportunities for children as they use their imagination in play. Here are some examples of things you can collect:

• Acorns

• Conkers

• Different types and colours of leaves

• Twigs and sticks

• Chestnuts

• Helicopter seeds

• Fir Cones

A top tip for displaying them is to put them in open bowls or baskets so that the children can see what is inside.

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2. Add balancing scales

Balancing scales are a great addition to the mud kitchen. Supporting children to develop an early mathematical understanding of weight and making comparisons; without needing to have developed their numerical understanding yet. Providing lots of opportunities for children to develop a rich mathematical language alongside peers and adults support learning and developing. And with all your autumn treasures you will have lots of things to compare of different weights, shapes and sizes to encourage children’s critical thinking and problem solving.

3. Mud kitchen recipes

Support children’s early literacy and mathematical development through having some special mud kitchen recipe cards designed for using in autumn. These cards have been developed and presented in different ways to support children in phase 2 or 3 phonics; and early mathematical skills e.g. number recognition or counting practise.

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4. Seasonal vegetables and Fruit

Add seasonal vegetables, such as pumpkins, butternut squashes, crab apples and blackberries to the mud kitchen. Alongside safety knifes so that the children can explore cutting them up and adding them to their recipes.

5. Embrace the rain and dampness!

Along with warm autumn sunny days, we can also experience some lovely very damp and wet autumn days. Consider add a water butt or some kind of vessel that can collect the rain water each day (remember to empty at the end of the day to avoid legionnaires). And jugs and cylinders so that children can begin to measure, and mix in lots of water in their play.

10 Top Tips for Helping Children to Settle into a New Academic Year

With September just around the corner and the summer nearly over, we thought we would share our top ten tips for helping children to settle into their new class or room this September. Whether you have completed visits to other settings, home visits, all about me books, or settle sessions. Or feel like you haven’t quite done enough yet. There are still practical things that we can do in the first few days to help children to settle quickly into the new year.

1. Make sure that all children have a named peg (or photo on a peg) for their first day to help them feel settled and like they belong.

2. Set-up an activity or guide them to an area of the room based on what you know about their likes and interests. For example, on the get to know you teacher day, Amelia’s mum said she loves to play with babies at home. On her first day make sure that the babies are out in the role-play area for her to play with.

3. For children who have English as an Additional Language make sure that you know keywords in their home language or have pictorial cards to help them communicate. For example, toilet, home, snack, food, drink. To ensure that they are able to communicate their basic needs with you.

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4. Spend time in the first few days establishing the routine with your children. Use a visual time table to help the children know what is coming next in the day.

5. Try and ensure the same person if possible greets them in their first week, offering consistency and a familiar face.

6. Take time to agree class or room rules alongside the children, giving them ownership for the space as co-owners. Not an adults space that they are stepping into.

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7. Spend time with children 1 on 1 and in small groups to help establish good positive relationships early on. For example, it might be sharing a book together or sitting and drawing together.

8. For children with special educational needs or disabilities, ensure that you have planned and prepared as a team how you are going to meet their needs. If they need additional support with tasks - what will that look like? Who will lead this?

9. Ensure that you have an environment, resources and interactions that promote emotional literacy. For example, emotion resources, opportunities to talk with children about how they might be feeling. Some children may not have the vocabulary yet and might need resources to help them communicate with others there feelings.

10. Get the parents to send in a photo from home of something that the children have done over the summer holiday’s. This can be a great talking point and then can be displayed or made into a book of our summer holiday’s.

What are your top tips for helping children to settle into a new room or class this September? We would love to hear them.

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Raising a Generation that is Emotionally Literate

In recent years we often speak about the importance of emotional literacy and learning from a young age to become emotionally literate. Emotional literacy can be defined as an ability to be able to identify, share, understand, develop empathy; and talk about our emotions (Sharp 2001). With the growing understanding and theoretical ideas around emotional literacy, we see the value to children’s development, self-confidence, self-worth, well-being and indeed the necessity of becoming emotionally literate so the future generation fully succeed and reach their full potential.

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For a few months now I have had a little example, knocking around in my head that has given me lots to think about on the topic of emotional literacy, how far we have come and what does this look like in young children. I was participating in some painting with a couple of children who were painting happy and sad faces; completely child-led this was not an adult designed activity or outcome of painting! None the less we were identifying and talking about what they were feeling. We were even talking about what might be making them sad or happy. For example, the boy is sad because there is a monster in his bedroom. Even though we were already having this amazing conversation, I remember, being taken back by J’s (age 4) response to, “tell me about your picture”. I never expected such a profound and articulate response that many adults I know may struggle to express.

“He is sad, because the happy one hit him. And there are sad clouds above him! Cos that is what sad feels like! Grey clouds above you!”

Wow! Right, this is emotional literacy, knowing what feelings are but also developing an ability to express what that emotion feels like to us ourselves. But it is even more, there is a next step to emotional literacy that goes beyond identifying, showing, empathy and talking about emotions. This is a great first step and we do a lot of it in the early years, through our enabling environment and positive relationships. For example, we often have picture books that label emotions with young children within the story area. Or us ourselves as part of our pedagogical approach will say things such as, “I wonder how you are feeling?”, “You look very sad. When I am sad, everything feels heavy”. These are discussions that skilful early years practitioners often have. Supporting children through, open questioning, modelling language and giving them space to explore their emotions in a non-judgemental space.

However, beyond this there are other elements to emotional literacy. Claude Steiner (1979) was one of the first theorists to talk about emotional literacy and he identified 5 elements to emotional literacy. These were:

·         Knowing your feelings,

·         Empathy,

·         Managing your emotions,

·         Repairing emotional problems,

·         Developing emotional interactivity.

I personally, love this model for breaking down the different aspects of emotional literacy and how the different elements work alongside one another. With the addition of what do we do beyond knowing our feelings, which traditionally has been a massive focus of Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) in the early years. Over the next coming weeks, we are going to use Steiner’s framework of the elements of emotional literacy and break them down and look at them in relation to the first 5 years of children’s lives. What does that element look like, but also how can we support our children through our curriculum and pedagogical approach.

References:

Sharp, P. (2001) Nurturing Emotional Literacy. Oxon: Routledge.

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International Tiger Day

What is International Tiger Day?

International Tiger Day is a global celebration that happens every year since 2010, to raise awareness about tiger conservation and natural habitats. People around the world celebrate International Tiger Day in a variety of ways, from information sharing too big events. As a company we are passionate believers that children are our future and that we need to teach them about the incredible world that we live in from a very young age. This is why we are supporting International Tiger Day as a company.

When is International Tiger Day?

International Tiger day is celebrated on the 29th July 2023.

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Why Celebrate International Tiger Day?

There are many reasons why people celebrate International Tiger Day and below are some of them:

·         In 2010 when International Tiger Day was launched, 97% of all wild tigers had disappeared (National Today)

·         To protect endangered species and to tackle illegal poaching (National Today)

·         To empower the future generation with knowledge about tiger conservation and natural habitats.

·         Because children within their early year’s settings are interested in tigers or animals.

·         To teach children about our ecosystem.

Ways of Celebrating International Tiger Day in the Early Years?

Raise money to sponsor a tiger as a setting:

One of the things that you can do as a setting is hold a fundraising event to raise money to either sponsor a tiger a setting or support a tiger conservation project. There are lots of things you can do to fundraise money and below are just 5 ideas:

1.       Hold a cake sale.

2.       Save 20 p’s in a smarties tube – just send smartie tubes home.

3.       Pre-loved clothes sale – ask parents to donate their outgrown preloved clothes and sell them to parents that need them for a donation.

4.       Sell produce to parents from the nursery’s allotment or vegetable patch.

5.       Have a summer fete with hook the duck, splat the rat and traditional games.

Five of our favourite tiger books:

• The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr

• Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright by Fiona Walters

• The Last Tiger by Becky Davies

• Never Touch a Tiger! By Rosie Greening

• That’s Not my Tiger by Fiona Watt

Three activities to go with the story The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr:

• Set up a tea-making tuff tray with cups, saucers, milk, sugar, jugs, tea pots, tea bags and coffees. For the children to develop their physical skills and communication and language through imaginative play. It also gives lots of opportunities for natural mathematics through exploration e.g. exploring capacity such as full, half-full and empty. Or counting how many spoons full of sugar you would like.

• Have a tiger tea party and make invites for your friends and make some yummy treats such as cupcakes and sandwiches. Through setting up a tea party and cooking/making food with the children you can cover all areas of the early years foundation stage in a fun and interactive way. From problem-solving how many chairs you need around the table, to practising physical skills as they mark-make their invites, pour ingredients or learning to retell what happened in the story. The possibilities are really endless.

• Make tiger masks so that you can be the tiger who came to tea. Whilst doing this activity you might want to look and talk about the patterns on tigers, how are they different to other animals? Can you get the toy small world animals out and look closely?

(Photo Credit: Chestnut Nursery School 2021 - The Tiger Who Came to Tea - Tea Party).

Paint pictures of tigers and have a tiger art gallery:

Use photos and toy tigers as a stimulus to encourage children to have a go at painting their own picture of a tiger. Host a tiger art gallery exhibiting all the children’s amazing artwork.  

 (Photo credits left to right: Queensway Infant Academy and Nursery (2023), Ducklings Nursery at Middleton Manchester (2021) and Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Loughton (2021).

India:

70% of the tiger population is in India (National Today), so why not do a mini topic looking at India with the children.  Here are five inspirational ideas to get you going on a journey to India:

1.       Make passports and tickets, as well as setting up a role play airport and catch a plane to India.

2.       Use non-fiction texts to find out information about tigers in India and set up a little news station for the children to share the information they find.

3.       Look at different maps and globes and find India.

4.       Set up a tuff tray of a tiger habitat and have pictures and information to go with it about tigers in India.

5.       Share with children the folktale from India – The Tiger Child. You can find a video of the story here.

We would love to hear how your setting celebrated International Tiger Day. Why not leave us a comment below and let us know?

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School Readiness Report - June 2023

We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who participated in our school readiness survey, we could not have written and published our first ever official report from Growing Together Developing Early Years. As a company we feel that it is important that we give back to the early year’s community, but also that we ground what we do in research, developmental theory and lessons from high-quality practice.

Our school readiness report had 3 aims:

·         What are early years practitioner’s perspectives of what school readiness is?

·         How many children in early years settings are perceived to be school ready?

·         What challenges do children face in the area of school readiness?

Over the coming days and weeks, we will be sharing snippets of our findings from the school readiness report via blog posts and our social media channels. Also, raising interesting comments and thoughts about where to go next with the recommendations and what does the early years sector need. You can access and download the full report for free.

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Abstract

This is a piece of explorative research of early years practitioner’s perspectives on school readiness with England. The research found that nearly half of all practitioners felt that 50-74% of their cohort starting school in 2023 are ready to start school. Practitioners discuss that children’s school readiness is impacted by a factor of developmental issues such as delayed speech and language, increase in screen time and the covid-19 pandemic. There are increasing concerns that children’s communication and language development and personal, social, and emotional skills are below the expected level to be school ready; and this has had a detrimental effect on the children who are starting reception class in September 2023.

5 Top Tips for Parents: To help their child be ready to start school.

As a parent or carer, we can often feel a lot of pressure around getting our children ‘school ready’. We might have well intentioned parents, grandparents’ friends, who start conversations with “When so-so started school they were writing their name!”. As we live in a society that loves to compare and shows everyone’s best lives not their struggles this can often leave people feeling unsure, or like we are not doing good enough.

In our previous blog what is school readiness (read here), we discussed how school readiness is much more then perhaps the societal perceptions that have been held for many years. But actually, it is making sure that children have the underpinning communication and language, personal social and emotional and physical development in order to be ready to start school. So, for example, they can listen and follow instructions, they can express their wants and needs to others, they have good large and small physical movements, and they can play alongside others.

1.       Share books – Books are a great way of supporting children’s communication and language development. Also, it can help to create a love for literacy from a young age, is great for supporting personal, social, and emotional development as you bond with your child as you read. Also, books can help to support your child’s listening and attention skills.

2.       Sing nursery rhymes – There is lots of research out their showing how fantastic nursery rhymes are for supporting children’s communication and language development. As well as their early literacy development. Meme Fox is often famously quoted for saying that children who know 8 nursery rhymes by the age of 4 years old are some of the best readers at the age of 8 years old.

3.       Visit the park – Visit the local park and climb tree, roll down a hill, play on the swings, climb on the climbing frame and apparatus. Or take your bikes and scooters and go for a ride. Children need to have developed their proprioception, vestibular senses, and gross motor skills before they are ready to sit and show control over a pencil.

4.       Support your children to dress themselves – Practise doing fastenings for example, zips and buttons on clothes so that children can do this independently themselves. Encourage children to dress themselves in the morning. Teach them how to know which way round they put their shoes on, for example, using a sticker cut in half that they have to match up to get their shoes the right way round.

5.       Practise your route to school – Familiarity can help with the transition to school. So whether you will be walking, biking or taking the car practising the route to school and talking about what you see on the way can support children to become familiar and confident with the experience.

School Readiness Series: How Can We Support Children to be School Ready?

Our last blog that you can find here, discussed what is school readiness regarding supporting our children to be ready to start reception class. This blog is going to consider how early years practitioners, from childminders to nurseries or preschools can support children within their care to become school ready. When we are thinking about school readiness, we want children to be confident, resilient, independent and to be managing their own self-care when they start school and children who have a good level of development in the prime areas of development.

So, the big question is what does this look like in reality? What is the support we give our children, so that we help them to be ready with the very best start through our early year’s provisions. We are going to break down the understanding of school readiness into areas, allowing us to discuss practical examples for each one.

Supporting Self-Care

When we think about self-care in the early years we are thinking about those physical skills or actions children develop to look after their bodies. For example, being able to dress themselves, feed themselves or brush their teeth. These everyday life activities that crucial to a healthy body and mind. Self-care is also about learning to look after our emotional well-being to be kind to ourselves and learn to regulate or behaviour and respond to our emotions and what we might do (we discuss supporting emotional well-being later in the blog when we look at supporting PSED).

Ideas to support children with their physical skills to support their self-care:

1.       Busy fastening boards – that include a range of different cloth fastenings for children to practise.

2.       Practise using knife and forks in playdough.

3.       Self-service snack and encouraging children to pour their own drinks.

4.       Sticker shoe trick to help children put their own shoes on. Cut a sticker in half and stick half inside each shoe, the children have to match it up to put their shoes in the right feet.

5.       Cooking activities with children that encourage them to use tools and knifes.

6.       Finger gym and fine motor activities, developing the muscles and coordination in those hands.

7.       Water play to develop children’s all important hand eye coordination.

8.       School uniform dress up – (great for also supporting children’s emotional well-being, as well as giving them the opportunity to practise)

Ideas for supporting children to learn about their hygiene needs:

1.       Nose wiping stations.

2.       Visuals in bathrooms showing children when they might need to wash their hands and how to wash hands.

3.       A curriculum that promotes oral health (see our previous blog here).

4.       Role-play, e.g. washing, dressing and looking after the baby dolls.

Supporting Physical Development

When children start school we often have a societal view of wanting them to be able to hold a pencil correctly to form letters. But what we want for our children goes far beyond this, because actually there is so many skills that children need before they are ready to write. For example, we need to have developed our gross motor skills, our shoulder pivots, elbow pivots and wrists pivots. Before we then go on to strengthen the muscles in our hands and fine motor skills. We need to have developed our core-body strength and stability so that we can sit and write. We need to have hand-eye coordination, and developed our vestibular and proprioception sense.

Therefore before we challenge children to form letters and hold a pencil we need to be working on those skills through encourage active play, climbing running, dancing, parachute games. We need to give children the opportunity to explore large scale mark-making such as mop painting, painting with rollers using those gross motor skills. As well as mark-making at different angles in order to develop elbow pivots. We need to roll down hills, squat and listen as we look at bugs and have endless opportunities to be physical within our enabling environments.

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Building Children’s Confidence, Resilience and Independence

Starting school is a big transition for most children and they are likely to be feeling a variety of emotions, big and small, good and bad. All emotions are okay and what we want is for our children to be resilient and be able to bounce back from different and difficult situations and show autonomy over their learning. For example, it is okay if I have to wait for my turn on the red bike; because I can apply the skills I have learnt in preschool, such as I can ask someone when they finish to let me know. Or we could use a timer to help us take turns. Also, when children are independent in their learning we see higher levels of motivation and learning, as they take ownership over what they are doing.

So we want to work on building children’s confidence, so that they are willing to have a go, see what happens and develop their own curiosity. This can be fostered through a curriculum and pedagogical approach that is open-ended, child-initiated and that promotes curiosity and enquiry based learning. For example, Harry found a ladybird in the garden and was talking to his friends about it. He looked closely at the dots and wings. This led onto a discussion about where we should put the ladybird and the children use non-fiction texts alongside a member of staff to find out about where ladybirds live and to make a home for it. The children also went on to do more bug hunts and insect related activities.

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Personal Social and Emotional Development

By the time children start school we want them to be able to begin to take turns with others. Remember this is a hard skill and sometimes, especially if it is something very important to us, we still may need a little bit of support with sharing. But we want to to be able to share those resources, take turns in games and also in conversations, understanding that is a two way flow of information. There are many games or activities out there that we can do to support children with turn-taking throughout our continuous provision and adult-led activities:

1. Orchard toys games - orchard toys have a variety of games designed for this age range that are great for promoting simple turn taking.

2. Taking it in turns to be helpers - for example, snack helpers.

3. Using timers with popular toys as a resource to help children take turns.

4. Games such as sound lotto.

5. Puzzles that children have to work collaboratively together to achieve.

We also want children to be able to express their emotions and share how they are feeling with others, and to be able to self-regulate their behaviour. For example, I know that I am feeling cross, I cannot control this feeling, but I can take a break from my friend or do something physical to help me manage this feeling. This is also, going back to self-care helping children to learn to respond to their emotional needs and to take care of themselves.

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Communication and Language Development

When children start school we want them to have the basic communication and language skills to be able to communicate effectively with adults and peers. To be able to listen and follow simple 2 part instructions, to enjoy listening to books and rhymes and join in retelling stories and singing nursery rhymes. We want them to be able to listen and focus on a conversation, staying on topic and following it and to be confident to communicate their wants and interests to others.

There are many ways that we can support children’s communication and language skills, through sharing a range of books or singing nursery rhymes. To making sure that we have language rich environment and communication friendly spaces. For children we have concerns about we can use intervention tools such as WellComm to support their communication and language development. High quality interactions between staff and children are also crucial in supporting early communication and language development. As well as offering a variety of phase one phonics activities that is going to help children to begin to listen, tune in and talk about different sounds that they hear.

School Readiness Series: What is School Readiness?

With last week being the day that expectant parents across the UK find out what primary school their children had been accepted into the term ‘school readiness’ has come back into focus. As schools, nurseries, childminders, preschools, and families get ready for those all-important transitions into reception in September 2023. And teachers in primary schools and families across the UK are helping children to prepare and become ready for their transition into Key Stage One.

School readiness has been a term that has been widely used in the past several years, particularly alongside the focus of concerns that more and more children across the UK are not ready to start school. For example, Watkins (2018) from Save the Children discussed how the UK government claims that 1 in 4 children are not meeting the expected level of development before starting school and how we are already letting them down. This has shockingly increased in the covid-19 pandemic where reception class teachers reported in a government survey that more then half their children were not ready to start reception and 88% of teachers and teaching assistants were having to spend more of their time with children who were not reaching their developmental milestones (Lawler 2022).

So, this leaves us with the question of what does school readiness actually look like? PHE (2015, p.4) defines “School readiness is a measure of how prepared a child is to succeed in school cognitively, socially and emotionally.” Although, it is worth noting that there is no national definition of school readiness and is somewhat a debate of what age group school readiness applies to; is these children starting school in reception or is it getting them ready to begin their journey into the national curriculum and key stage one? (Ofsted 2014). This is before the then criteria differ from setting to setting as to our own pedagogical beliefs, curriculum and what we view as being school ready.

For the sake of this blog series, we are considering what school readiness looks like for those children that are going into reception class in September. Below is an image of page 6 from the document Improving School Readiness Creating a Better Start for London by Public Health England (PHE) (2015). Highlighting their views of what school readiness at the age of 4 looks like and the skills, development, and experiences we are expecting our 4-year-olds to have.

This document is also a very useful document for highlighting the why (intent) behind focusing on school readiness in the UK and the benefits of investing in school readiness to support children’s development, learning and the impact on future outcomes.

Another, popular poster that is commonly used with early years settings is The Road to School poster by Nursery Resources. This poster shares similar skills and attributes that as an early year’s community we are looking for children to be able to do to be school ready. As well as the steps to starting school from PACEY.

Find a downloadable version of this here from PACEY.

To me as an early year’s consultant being school ready is having a good level of development in the prime areas, communication and language, physical development, and personal, social and emotional development. As well as having begun to develop a lifelong love for learning, based in being curious and inquisitive. It is being able to talk about your own emotions and coregulating alongside experienced teachers. It is being independent for example, dressing yourself, feeding yourself, being able to make choices, having confidence to talk to others that are in your class. It is having the basic communication and language needs to listen and pay attention, to communicate their needs and to share ideas and make friends. It is also about have good gross motor and fine motor skills ready for learning. Everything else will come at the time that is right for the children. Because these3 areas of learning are going to underpin everything, so being school ready is making sure children are strong and confident in these areas of learning!

References:

Lawler (2022) Half of all children are not ready for school [accessed online 28.04.2023]

https://www.eyalliance.org.uk/news/2022/03/half-all-children-are-%E2%80%9Cnot-ready-start-school%E2%80%9D-yougov-survey-suggests

PACEY (year unknow) Steps to Starting School, [accessed online 28.04.2023]

https://www.pacey.org.uk/Pacey/media/Website-files/PACEY%20general/Steps-to-starting-school.pdf

Public Health England (2015) Improving School Readiness Creating a Better Start for London [accessed online 28.04.2023] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/459828/School_readiness_10_Sep_15.pdf

Watkins (2018) Mind the Gap Getting Our Children Ready for School [accessed online 28.04.2023]

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/blogs/2018/mind-the-gap-getting-our-children-ready-for-school#:~:text=We%20are%20letting%20down%20many%20children%20before%20they,%E2%80%93%20haven%E2%80%99t%20reached%20the%20expected%20level%20of%20development

Earth Day 2023 - Invest in Our Planet

22nd April 2023

Earth day is a day that gets celebrated around the world every year, and it is a great time for reflection and education about climate changes, environmental issues and looking after the planet that we live on. This year’s theme for earth day 2023 is ‘Invest in Our Planet’. So, what does it mean to invest in our planet and why should we be sharing this with children in early years settings? Also, how can we share this important message with children in early years settings?

What does it mean to invest in our planet for earth day?

[ED2023 Promo Video - downloaded from www.earthday.org]

Earth day is one of the largest environmental movements and you can find out more about all off their amazing work here. Investing in our planet is about promoting sustainability, love for the world that we live in, going green being a necessity and thinking about the ways that we can develop climate literacy to address the problems our planet faces.

Why should we be sharing and promoting earth day in early years settings?

I passionately believe that we as early years educators should be investing in the education of our children that goes beyond the basis of the Early Years Foundation Stage or our National Curriculum. We should be talking about the big issues, the change that needs to happen in the world, because children are the future. I know it sounds corny, but it is true, this will be there planet far longer then it is ours and we have a duty to teach our children about sustainability, about taking care for the planet and climate changes that are happening.

Sometimes we can shy away from talking about the big issues with children, saying they are only children. But if we begin to teach them messages from a young age, such as we are recycling our plastic to look after the world. It will put in place habits that will support children throughout their lives and teach them valuable lessons. We just need to be teaching messages in an age-appropriate way, for example, we do a litter pick and we talk about how rubbish hurts the animals and the environment.

How can we share the important message of earth day?

There are many ways that we can share the message of earth day in early years settings, and here are 10 ideas:

1.       Set up a recycling centre role-play areas – this gives the children the opportunity to practise their recycling skills and act out their experiences with others.

2.       Share books about sustainability and looking after the earth such as George Saves the World by Lunchtime, Michael Recycle, Marli’s Tangled Web, The Journey of a Plastic Bottle and so on.

3.       Organise a community litter pick.

4.       Plant your own vegetables in the garden.

5.       Walk to school, preschool or nursery for the week  to reduce carbon emissions.

6.       Plant a tree at your early years setting.

7.       Create earth day posters about how we can look after the world.

8.       Plant some bee friendly plants in the garden.

9.       Set up a compost bin in the garden rather than sending waste to the landfill.

10.   Shop locally for nursery supplies.

George Saves the World by Lunch Time

We will be touring the East of England with our 45 minute - an hour session based on the story, ‘George Saves the World by Lunchtime’. A session filled with puppets, stories, role-play, parachute games, crafts and becoming our very own eco superheroes.

Prices start from £75

British Science Week 2023

Connections

10th to 19th March 2023

Blog 4 - Where to start with developing a STEM curriculum in the early years?

In the early years at the moment there is an exciting buzz (although sometimes daunting) about what is your curriculum and developing your own curriculum. This has been the increasing emphasis since the introduction of the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in 2021. Compiled with the ever demanding pressure of Ofsted who want to see early yeas settings delivering an ambitious curriculum, which is regularly referred to in the Early Years Inspection Framework 2021.

After what feels like many years of a potentially interpreted system of you must do x-y-z as you curriculum, the power has been returned now to early years practitioners. Highlighting in particular that the focus is not solely on the EYFS development matters statements, or indeed that learning happens only with the designated areas of learning in the EYFS. Rather we know see the EYFS educational programs (areas of learning) as the bare bones and our job is to put the meat on the bones. But also remembering that settings curriculum’s that are ambitious are unique, tailored to the individual children’s interests, motivations and learning.

This is a fantastic opportunity to reflect on your settings curriculum and incorporate or focus on STEM education as part of your unique and ambitious curriculum that you offer your children. That builds upon the seven areas of development and the characteristics of effective learning and teaching. We appreciate that this power might feel daunting and you may be unsure of where to start, so we are sharing with you three tips to developing your STEM curriculum to get you started.

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Understanding Your Curriculum - 24th June 2024 from 7:30 till 8:30 pm

£12.00

Tip One - Develop Curriculum Outcomes

My first recommendation is to think of curriculum outcomes in relation to STEM skills and knowledge, that you would like to see children develop by the time they leave your setting. When we think about what curriculum is in it’s simplest definition curriculum is what we want children to learn in the time that they are with us.

STEM skills are those foundational skills that children need to develop in order to be able to reach their full potential or engage in STEM education. Such as learning to problem-solve, test ideas, observe, talk and share their ideas with others, hypothesize, work in collaboration, resilience, to be able to think of ideas, be innovative, being curious, being methodical and so on.

STEM knowledge is specific information we want children to gain in relation to STEM. For example, this might be developing an understanding of growth, change and decay. Learning the life cycle of a butterfly. Or about capacity, gravity, magnitude, electricity and so on.

A STEM curriculum goal example

To be able to talk and share their observations with their peers and adults about what happens to plants over a period of time; demonstrating an understanding of plant life cycles, growth, decay and change.

Tip Two - Outline the Steps Children Take to Reach Curriculum Outcomes

When we think about children’s learning, it is often a journey where children go through different stages before they get to the end goal of our curriculum. So it is really helpful to think about what are those stages that children go through in order to meet that goal. Take some time as a team to discuss child development, your knowledge of your children and how you can break the learning down into smaller steps to get to the end goal.

Steps to consider when breaking down curriculum goals

• Physical development.

• Personal, social and emotional development.

• Communication and language.

• What prior knowledge do the need to reach the end goal?

Curriculum Goal Example: To be able to talk and share their observations with their peers and adults about what happens to plants over a period of time; demonstrating an understanding of plant life cycles, growth, decay and change.

• Under twos - to develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination to enable them to help plant plants and water them. To use key words relating to life cycle e.g. small, big, grow, seed, plant.

• Two to threes - to be able to look after their plants with support and help e.g. watering plants. To use simple sentences to relay their observations about plants and seeds. E.g. “It got bigger!” To develop their observational skills through a variety of sensory play and activities (to support their knowledge understanding and language development for talking about what they observe).

• Three to Four Year olds -Talk about and retell the life cycle of a plant to peers/adults. To show care and concern for their plants and begin to understanding what they need. e.g. sunshine, water etc. To listen and respond appropriately to others as they share ideas.

*Please note that this is not inclusive of all the skills that children might need to learn the overall curriculum goal outlined and that this is based in a curriculum that already offers a firm foundation of learning opportunities across the 3 prime areas of development. These are communication and language development, personal, social and emotional development and physical development, that will underpin and lay the foundations for a well-rounded STEM curriculum.

Tip Three - Develop a Bank of Ideas

For each of your curriculum goals and steps that children will go through on their journey to reaching the mail goal , it can be really helpful to develop a bank of ideas. This is because especially when starting something new we might need to look for ideas and inspirations, it might not come naturally to us in the moment. Or if you are anything like I was we can easily full into the habit of doing the same thing, because it worked before and by having a bank of ideas it encourages us to try new ideas and offer more of a breadth of experiences.

Example bank of ideas to support curriculum goal

• Vegetable patch,

• Cress monsters,

• Activities to develop observational skills, - e.g. gloop, dancing raisins experiment, colour mixing activities,

• Life cycle books and activities,

• Observational still life painting/drawing.

“The best learning comes through experience, play and hands on opportunities. If we want to learn about how a seed turns into a tomato, let’s explore the seeds, plant the seeds, nurture them and watch them grow. I strongly believe children are not passive in their learning, they are active involved and making meaningful connections through doing.”

— Pauline Milsted Early Years Consultant

Want to find out more or join our upcoming training, ‘Developing Your STEM Curriculum in the Early Years? We would love for you to join us and have more information below.

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Developing a STEM Curriculum in Early Years Settings - 24th October 2024 from 7:30 till 9 pm

£17.50

British Science Week 2023

Connections

10th - 19th March 2023

Blog 3 - The opportunities for scientific learning through cooking activities.

Our third blog in our series for British Science Week 2023 is looking at how we can support scientific learning through participating in cooking and baking activities with children in the early years. Cooking with children is a great way of support scientific learning, from making observations, working collaboratively and developing their language skills. To support specific knowledge applied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics); through hands-on practical life experiences. For example, measuring ingredients whilst cooking, learning about cause and effects, liquids and solids, changes in materials and so on.

Baking Bread with Children

Baking bread with children in early years settings used to be one of my all time favourite cooking activities to do. It is rich with supporting so many areas of learning across the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage), from working on those physical skills, hand-eye coordination, muscles development in arms and hands for writing, to supporting mathematical learning whilst they measure ingredients. But additionally baking bread is great for children who are learning about changes over time and cause and effect. As they learn to make observations and talk about what they see, for example, the dough rising (or growing) before popping it in the oven. The change between the dough and the cooked bread. There are lots of opportunities here for children to develop those all important STEM skills that we talk about and make connections between their observations.

Or the simple observations of the reaction that happens with yeast, warm water and sugar. Have you ever mixed your yeast with warm water in a bottle and placed a balloon over the end to see what happens? As the yeast reacts with the sugar, it lets of the gas of carbon dioxide and inflates the balloon. Find out more here.

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Nursery Wholemeal Bread Recipe Card

£1.00

Connections and Cooking

This years theme for British Science Week is connections. Learning about food is a great way for children to make connections in their everyday discoveries. Everyone needs food and food can be a fantastic way of opening the doors to many other areas of learning and development. For example, the British Science Week Activity Pack shares an early years activity idea for how does food get to our plate. Click here to learn more.

Cooking with children is a great way to open up discussion around food, where does it come from? How do we make the flour to go into our cakes? An endless amount of questions and opportunities that can be extended in a variety of ways from learning about how a flour mill works to planting your own vegetables in the garden to use whilst cooking. This is one of the fantastic things in the early years, we can ask those questions alongside the children, become curious learners with them and develop our own ideas.

As well as the endless connections children are going to develop whilst participating in cooking activities and learning about the ingredients, carrots are hard - tomatoes are soft. Learning about how sugar dissolves in warm water, or how mixtures change over time e.g. a cake mixture goes from a liquid consistency to a solid. What an amazing awe moment for a 2 year old? They are physically learning so much about cause and effect through these activities.

2 More Things to Try Cooking this British Science Week

Chocolate Shredded Wheat Nests

Observe and talk about:

What happens to the chocolate when it gets warm?

Why is the chocolate melting?

What will happen if we put them in the fridge?

What happens to the chocolate when it cools down?

Vegetable Soup

Observe and talk about:

Where do all the vegetables used come from?

Talk about vegetable properties, how do they grow?

Talk about what happens to the vegetables as you cook them.

How does the soup change in consistency?

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Developing a STEM Curriculum in Early Years Settings - 24th October 2024 from 7:30 till 9 pm

£17.50

British Science Week 2023

Connections

10th to 19th March 2023

Blog 2 - Connections - Starting with a question to support child-led learning and the influences of the High Scope approach plan-do-review on child-led learning.

Our second blog post for British Science Week 2023 (#BSW23) is looking at how we can start with a question to support scientific learning in the early years. We will also be exploring aspects of child-led learning, as they develop their own questions and we work with children to support this area of enquiry led learning. And think about the lessons we can learn to support scientific learning from the influential work of the High Scopes approach of plan-do-review with children.

Starting With a Question

Children are naturally curious and Piaget often referred to children as mini-scientists. All of our children have questions inside them that they love to ask and are naturally interested in the why and how things work or happen in the world around them. When thinking about this years topic for BSW23 of connections I think that this is such an important part of how children learn and develop in general; because learning in its very simplistic form is us making connections between different pieces of knowledge that we are obtaining.

Piaget often referred to this process as schematic learning and how we develop schemas of knowledge. These are the up to date ideas, knowledge and information that we hold about the world around us. Often in the early years we talk about schemas as the way in which children make sense of the world around them, Because we see repeated actions in their play, for example, a child within the trajectory schema will be exploring throwing, often drop things from a highchair, explore the movement of themselves and objects both vertically and horizontally. This is the way that there brains are making connections and learning about the all important world around them,

Again, Again, Again: Schema's in the Early Years Webinar Recording

£8.50

This is a recorded version available for teams or individuals of our popular webinar, ‘Again, Again, Again: Schema’s in the Early Years’ for those who cannot attend a live event.

Have you ever wondered why children do certain things again and again? This interactive webinar explores schematic learning, when children repeat certain patterns of behaviour over and over again. We aim to support parents and practitioners in identifying the schema’s that their children may be in and ways to support the different schema’s in our environment, activities and play opportunities.

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As a constructivist Piaget spoke about the process of accommodation, assimilation and reaching equilibrium as we build on our schemas of knowledge about the world around us. I often think of schemas as boxes of knowledge/information. When we are assimilating these boxes (schemas) it is changing the information that we already have, where as accommodation is creating a new box (or schematic structure) of information to build with because something does not fit in with our pre-existing ideas. This then help’s us to reach a status of equilibrium, where there is no conflict between previous and new pieces of knowledge and information.

Tuning into children’s questions that they have about the world around them and how things work, is a fantastic way of exploring connections with young children. Whether that be questions that they have verbalised, such as, “Why is a tiger different to a cheetah?”. Or it is discovered through our careful observations of children’s learning and development that leads to supporting children’s enquiry-based learning through our careful interactions and enabling environments. For example, we have noticed that Tommy has been sat with the clipboard and the toy cars and is placing the cars at the top, watching them go down and saying “wow!”. We might extend this to support more child-led learning, for example, adding in different materials to make ramps e.g. pieces of wood or cardboard. We might add non-standard units for measuring etc. But we are following the child’s interest and lead throughout the activity.

Child-Led Learning

Maria Montessori was a key advocate for child-led learning. This is where the children control the narrative of their learning and the direction in which it goes in. It is very much about the child being in control of learning in a well-planned and prepared environment, where the role of the adult (or teacher) is to facilitate their learning’ whilst allowing them to lead, problem-solve and think of ideas for themselves. When children have more autonomy over their play and learning (remember play is learning!!) and are given the opportunity to follow their intrinsic motivations and interests we see higher levels of learning from our children, increased concentration and we will also see lots of STEM skills coming through naturally in their play.

A word of caution when being child-led in practise. Remember that the children may have different ideas to us, and that is completely okay. So we may observe something and think, I know we can plan to do x-y-z, but then it comes to doing it and the children are not interested but have rather gone in different direction. They may still do your planned idea, or they may show no interest and that is fine! Stand back observe and ask the children what they would like to do next and tune back into following their agenda of learning; this doesn’t mean our adult-led plans and ideas are bad. And I personally think there is time and space for both, but don’t beat yourself up when you realise there wonderful brains have gone in a different direction to your fabulous brain. They have just made different connections and it’s kind off incredible really!!

HighScope Appraoch - Plan, Do and Review

The process of plan - do and review that is adopted and implemented successfully by the High Scope Approach can be very beneficial to scientific learning and development and may be an approach that you want to consider introducing as part of your BSW23 exploration of the topic connections and beyond.

Plan - this is the children’s opportunity to talk about and share what they would like to do today and how they are going to do this.

Do - is the child’s exploration and play as they go off and do whatever action they have planned.

Review - is the opportunity to discuss, what they have learnt, how well they activity went, what could they do next and so on.

If you would like to find out more about the High Scope Approach please follow the link here for an informative video.

Sometimes within the UK we might use what we refer to as a K-W-L chart to support this process of plan-do-review. This is where for topics or new areas of interest we start with what we know, what we want to learn (where we articulate our questions and things that we want to do) and then we review what we have learned.

For example, if our topic is apples, we might know apple seeds grow into apple trees but we might want to know how? And then after some activities, exploration planned activities, hopefully we will be able to show what we have learned about the life cycle of an apple.

Thank you so much for reading our second blog for BSW23. We hope you are enjoying and finding them interesting, please do like, share with colleagues and comment. Follow us for our next blog post in our BSW23 series that will look at scientific learning and cooking.

British Science Week 2023

Connections

10th - 19th March 2023

Blog One - Why are we promoting and doing British Science Week 2023?

Join us for our special series of blogs all about British Science Week 2023. This first blog will look at unpacking the why behind British Science Week. Why do we participate in British Science Week? Why have we decided to promote it as a company? And why is science education important in the early years? We also look in this blog post at discussing what are STEM skills we can observe within our early years settings.

Why participate in British Science Week?

There are many possible benefits and reasons why to participate in British Science Week and I think as always it is important to reflect on why, before we decide to engage. The reason for this is that there are hundreds of special days, weeks around the world and we simply cannot do them all! Some will suit our early years settings, our ethos, our unique approaches and some will not (and that’s okay!!).

What I love about this week in particular is that we promote children’s critical thinking, curiosity, active learning and opportunity to explore, play develop and make connections! I think that fits in perfectly with our mini-scientists that we have in any early years settings. I personally feel that British Science week provides the opportunity for a catalyst for scientific learning that goes beyond the designated week. It gives us the time to refocus, reenergise ourselves, get enthusiastic again for scientific learning and share what science in the early years actually is with parents and carers.

“Children are little scientists.”

— Jean Piaget

Why are we promoting British Science week 2023 as a company?

As a director of the company I passionately believe that every child has a scientist within them. And it is our job to nurture children’s natural curiosity about the world around them. In order to support the critical thinkers and innovators of the future. To promote children’s ability to make connections and think of their own ideas. Science and also the addition of STEM education I believe is instrumental to developing curious, innovative and critical thinkers.

Why is science important in the early years?

Often when we think of science in the early years we think about the educational program Understanding of the World that is outlined in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) 2021.

“Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them ... In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world.”

— Department for Education (2021)

We often place science under the making sense of our physical world, learning about animals, or plants how they grow. Or how seasons change from one to another through building upon children’s first-hand experiences. However, we know that high quality settings that promote curiosity, the characteristics of effective learning and an ambitious curriculum go above and beyond what is outlined in the educational program of the EYFS.

But also science isn’t a separate subject to learning in the early years, when children are playing, exploring and learning they are often beginning to develop simple scientific concepts and understandings. For example, “The car goes faster when we make the ramp steeper” - therefore, applying scientific knowledge around the impact of gradient, speed and distance among other concepts. When we think about science in the early years, we often also extend this into STEM education and focusing on developing what we call STEM skills.

What are STEM Skills?

This are the skills that children are developing through STEM education that are going to help them to be lifelong learners, as well as develop their STEM knowledge. These are:

Critical thinking, innovation, creativity, hypothesising, testing, imagination, observational skills, collaboration, passion, open-mindedness, resilience, commitment, communication, planning and preparation, curiosity, self-motivation and to be methodical and logical.

Research suggests that is much more important to support children to develop the above STEM skills, then to simply impart scientific knowledge. As children develop an autonomy over their learning, have higher levels of engagement, and also become lifelong learners in a world that is ever changing. Our role is to nurture the above STEM skills, to equip our children to become problem-solvers through the challenging, hands-on active STEM curriculum that we provide.

What’s next for our blog series?

Over our coming blogs we are going to explore this years theme of connections for British Science Week in more depth and what this could translate to in our early years curriculum (what we want the children to learn) and pedagogical approach (how we teach). Here is a list of the coming blogs.

• Blog 2 - Connections - Starting with a question to support child-led learning and the influences of the HighScope approach plan-do-review on child-led learning.

• Blog 3 - Connections - The opportunities for scientific learning through cooking activities.

• Blog 4 - Where to start with developing a STEM curriculum in the early years?

• Blog 5 - Connections - The power of children' developing observational and effective communication skills to scientific learning.

• Blog 6 - Connections - Enabling Environments - Top tips to promote connections through your environment.

What are your goals as a company for 2023?

The other day someone asked me, “What are you goals for your business for 2023?”. So, naturally I have been thinking about this huge question. I am not normally someone who is for setting new years resolutions, but what is it that Growing Together Developing Early Years wants to achieve in the next year? As a company we always trying to achieve our 5 core values, these are:

• To be children centred

• To be accountable

• To participate in purposeful change to facilitate impact

• To build strong and resilient relationships

• To be people-focused

Additionally, though for 2023 as a company we want to work with you all to reinvent and refocus on our very own 3 R’s:

·         Reenergise

·         Refocus

·         Reinspire

As we emerge as a sector from a global pandemic and being to go back to ‘normal’ live these 3 words seem to be a perfect theme to focus on in 2023. As we hear the word recession, cost of living crisis and many challenges we are facing as individuals, companies, and a sector, we want to bring some positivity through the work we do to lift everyone that we work with.

Reenergise – to work with early years settings to bring energy to our settings, after a tiring through years. To focus on energising staff and teams through supporting well-being, developing passions, creating a community of learners and live, and providing high quality education.

Refocus – To work with settings to refocus on where they are on their journey and where next? To refocus on thinking about good practice in the early years, the importance of play and the fundamentals of early years practice.

Reinspire – We want to inspire those we work with through our enthusiasm and passion, that we share through networking, social media channels and training. We want to share others inspirational practice and celebrate the excellence we see in early years settings.

This is our 3 R’s for 2023, reenergise, refocus and reinspire. We cannot wait to do this with all the wonderful settings we work with and to reach even more early years settings.

Bring on 2023!

Pauline Milsted

Director of Growing Together

How to Have a Fabulous National Story Telling Week on a Budget!

National Storytelling Week (NSTW) is a firm favourite of myself as an early years consultant. I am a firm believer that we all have a story inside us to tell, we are born storytellers. And this week gives us the opportunity to share stories, to build narratives and even better we can do it on a budget without spending hundreds of pounds! 

Here are your 5 tips for doing NSTW on a budget:

1. Involve your community!

We will all have members of our teams, families, or local people in our community that have stories to tell. Whether It is a traditional or cultural story passed down from generation to generation Ask people in to tell a story or research stories that families share that they grew up with. Also, are day to day lives are made up of stories, from telling a story about going to the shops or a holiday that we have recently had. This is also a great time to look at the stories of different occupations, for example, the day in the life of a builder.

(Images left to right: Fresh Expressions 2023, Storytellers Singapore, 100 Stories Before School 2015)

2. Make your own puppets!

Practise scissor skills cutting out your favourite characters from magazines and catalogues. Then turn them into your own stick puppets for storytelling, by sticking them onto lollypop sticks. Or design on cardboard and carefully cut out your very own characters to be the centre of your story, perhaps a dragon, a princess or a monster! Or make some of simple finger felt finger puppets developing fine motor skills and sewing around the edge.

3. Model storytelling in play

As children play and add a narrative to their play they are naturally telling stories.  Play alongside the children, modelling vocabulary structure and natural storytelling. Whether it is when you are playing with the small world toys, or making up stories in the garden about running away from a big scary monster. Children need to see us as storytellers as well.

4. Create story maps

Story mapping is a great way of involving children story telling and sequencing. You can use this to tell a story children are familiar with or use it as a tool to visually map out the story you are telling. It is great for highlighting the details of a story beyond beginning, middle and end as you draw pictures for the main points of the story. This is also a technique that children can then use to retell their own stories before they are ready to write.

(Aberford C of E Primary, 2017)

5. Yoga Storytelling

I was recently at an outdoor setting (Born to Woodland in Rayleigh Essex) and was very inspired by their yoga story time. They have a story of the month, e.g. the very hungry caterpillar and they use different yoga moves to support children's wellbeing and physical development. I loved this idea and is something you can easily makeup or do in your setting. There are also a variety of books and online resources available to help you with this.

(Photo Credits: The wonderful staff and children at Born to Woodland, Rayleigh Essex. Joining in their yoga stories! Born to Woodland is a setting that caters for children between the ages of 3 to 11 years old).

Numeracy November 2022

Why are we launching our first ever Numeracy November?

Today is the launch of our very first ever Numeracy November. Numeracy skills are the basic skills or knowledge to apply mathematical knowledge practically in everyday life experiences, for example, at home, work, or school. We use maths in so many of our daily activities without even realising it, from popping to the shops, to baking a cake, budgeting our finances, driving our cars and working out distances, special awareness or working out ratios! Numeracy skills are an integral part of everyday living.  

Jerrim (2018) stated that research suggests that in England 4 out of 10 adults are unable to make simple everyday mathematical calculations, whilst Fox (2021) reports that only half of UK adults have a basic level of primary mathematics. This is well below the average of other developed countries. Whilst in 2020 it was reported that 1 in 4 GCSE Students, received a D or below for mathematics (BBC News 2020). This trend goes all the way down to the early years where we know that in 2018 and 2019, 1 in 5 children in did not meet the expected levels for mathematical development (DfE 2019). We need to focus on supporting the foundations of children’s learning to support the trends for future learning, confidence and love for mathematics.

Numeracy November will be running for the whole of November 2022, where we plan to share lots of content and information that will meet the following aims. With the full intention of supporting the early years community as much as possible. And drawing on real life practical examples and sharing a wide range of resources and places to access more help.

In Numeracy November we aim too:

• Create a love for applying mathematics in real life!

• Help you to support staff who may be struggling with number confidence and signpost helpful resources.

• Debunk mathematical terminology.

• Help you to create a numeracy rich environment in the early years.

• Help you to create a love for numeracy among the children you work with.

How can you get involved?

There are many ways that you can get involved in Numeracy November 2022. You can like and follow posts on Facebook or Instagram. Sign up to our mail merge. Or share ideas in our Early Years Practitioners with Growing Together group on Facebook.

Our Ofsted Experience Hitchin House Day Nursery

Climbing wall at Hitchin House Day Nursery - Taken from their Facebook page on 05/09/2022

I recently caught up with the wonderful Zoe Wright, Operations Director for Hitchin House Day Nursery. They have recently had an Ofsted inspection and she wanted to share their experience. And how her and her team managed the inspection on the day.

“Firstly, I would like to say that they did what they said on the tin!”

Like many of us Zoe was concerned about the Ofsted inspection, we have many bad, good, and in-between experiences in the sector, which can leave us feel anxious and unsure about what will happen on the day. However, Zoe was very keen to share with myself and others that they really did do what they said they would do in the Early Years Inspection Framework. This is something that I am hearing quite a lot at the moment, which I think is a positive step towards the consistency that has often concerned us all.

The Day Before the Inspection

Hitchin House Day Nursery have been anticipating their first ever Ofsted Inspection since opening and when Zoe’s mobile rang at around midday from a private number. She said, “that will be Ofsted!” and she was not wrong. The inspector went through and gathered the various checklists of information that is highlighted in the Early Years Inspection Framework and said that they would discuss their Covid-19 measures when in attendance the following day.

“As I began talking the staff, just placed the prompt sheet in front of me, I was so grateful!”

Zoe had created a prompt sheet to support her colleagues in case it was not her that answered the phone. But in the moment of nerves and excitement this also came in very handy for Zoe and is a great idea to pass onto other early years settings as you plan and prepare for your inspection. Within the phone call they also arranged the time that 2 inspectors (due to the size of the setting) would arrive the following day 7:30 am! An early day for them all!

In preparation for the next day, they didn’t do anything special as a nursery, they informed the staff. Some volunteered to come in as extra the following day, excited to be part of the team and in it together ready for their inspection. All the senior and middle leaders went out for a meal that night together, not to discuss Ofsted although they were welcome to, but to have that time together and support well-being.

Inspection Day

The setting had two inspectors that literally worked in tandem throughout the day, making the inspection seamless and the most effective use of time. One of the inspectors was named the lead inspector. They split up the daily activities and tasks between them, regularly reviewing timings and having points of the day where they caught up and checked in with each other.

Eve the nursery manager was the best person to do the learning walk, enthusing her passion and making the very most of every single opportunity.

“Think Carefully about who does the learning walk, who is the best person to make the most of every opportunity and sell your setting!”

Whilst doing the learning walk that took about 2 hours (Hitchin House is a large setting with lots of amazing things to see!), Eve would stop to do things such as highlight good practice as they saw it happening. Zoe discussed how it was crucial that she was “using every room to cover aspects of the early years inspection framework!” Meaning that Eve managed to get lots of details in about the setting and have some clear effective conversations. The Ofsted inspector also commented as a key point on how effectively the 3I’s: Intent, Implementation and Impact were covered within the learning walk.

“Use every room to cover aspects of the early years inspection framework”.

She also used the learning walk as a chance to share how the needs of children are met, to discuss children with special educational needs and disabilities and examples of excellent practise. As well as covering a minor complaint that the setting had received, safeguarding children and adults and reiterating the ethos of the setting. She also highlighted a strength of the setting in coaching and mentoring by supporting a new member of staff in front of Ofsted. This is a great way of highlighting to Ofsted and them seeing how we supervise and support staff to grow and develop, so don’t shy way from making the most of those learning opportunities for staff like you normally would because of Ofsted are watching. As a sub text of this Eve was then able to cover safer recruitment, induction, and supervision through sharing the new member of staff’s file.

While the learning walk was occurring the second inspector was with Zoe talking about the recent complaint and safeguarding. She also took the time to talk 1 on 1 about safeguarding with a member of staff who wanted to speak to the inspector, and this was arranged so it could happen. Zoe talked about how although we may want to shy away from complaints, that it was beneficial for them to keep that at the forefront of all of what they were sharing; rather then brushing under the carpet.

“Face complaints head on, do not shy away from them.”

A staff member volunteered themselves to be the member that was being observed doing the joint observation and was doing a sing and sign session with a group of children. Zoe the operations director again used this as an opportunity to support one of the middle leaders in the growth and development, by asking them their feedback and encouraging them to share what they thought about what had just been observed. This again, was able to show a strength of the setting in coaching and mentoring, but also the wider ability of staff to be reflective and evaluative of practise.

They tracked two children throughout the setting one child with SEND and the also wanted to track the newest child to the setting. It was only her 2nd day, but they were impressed with how well the staff knew they key child and how the child could not be picked out from the other children. They spoke to staff about the children, they didn’t have to see any paperwork, or ask for anything specific, just like they said they don’t. Although, one inspector did share she didn’t have to but would love to look out of nosiness (this would so be me as an inspector!).

At around 12:30 pm they re-met and discussed the itinerary for the rest of the day that the management meet with going to be at 2 pm, and the feedback at 2:30 pm. They just wanted some time again in tandem to go around and explore the different rooms and areas of the setting. They also shared that in order to write something in a report they have to see it, so for example, to talk about the climbing wall they had to see children on the climbing wall. They were also asked to “go away and tell them what makes there setting different.” For when they got back together to discuss.

The 2 pm, meeting only took half an hour because Eve had done such a fantastic job of covering most things as part of the learning walk. And then they were into feedback. We can’t share this yet, as their report is not published, but as soon as I have seen it I will share it with you all.

All in all, the inspection was a very pleasant experience for the setting and was all over by 3:30 pm, again keeping to the time frame that is outlined within the early year’s inspection framework. Zoe also shared that they had done a lot of online research beforehand, looking at a variety of websites for example, google, day nurseries, website, Instagram and Facebook.

“Make sure that you have a good internet presence and that it is also good for professionals. And address any bad reviews.”

Supporting Storytelling Through Block Play in the Early Years

For our final blog post in our block play series, we are going to look at how block play can support children to develop that inner storyteller. Whether that be through incorporating small-world play and props role-playing being construction workers. There is lots of opportunities and ways that we can support children to develop their narrative, communication and language skills, and personal social and emotional skills as they work together to add a storyline to their play.

What are the stages of story telling in play?

Children will go through different stages as they begin to use props to make up stories and add dialogue to their play. For example, children may begin to add voice sounds as the run a car across the floor going “brrm brrm”. This is the very early stage of children adding dialogue to represent their understanding and experiences. We then act out our familiar experiences using available props, for example, we may pick up the hammer and begin to bang the hammer and represent what they have observed others doing. As children get older, they begin to play alongside other children in their play, so for example, we all might be playing tea shops making teas and coffees. We are engaged in the same activity, but we are not necessarily reliant on each other for our play or interacting with one another. Children them move into the stage of collaborative play where they are working together to develop their storyline and direction of play.

The reason I share the stages of play is that it is important to reflect on where your individual children are in their journey when you are supporting storytelling through play. For example, if you have a child who is many solitary in their play but is beginning to add noises and sounds to their play. You maybe supporting them by modelling joining in and playing alongside others. Or using communication and language to invite them in and add narrative to a play and to show them perhaps (not an indefinite way as play is open ended) but suggestions that could spark their interest or enhance their play. For example, you build a bridge using the construction blocks. You test to see if it is high enough to fit the toy car underneath. You then might add some “brrm brrm” or “beep beep” noises as you move the cars around.

Ways to support storytelling in block play?

There are many ways that we can support story telling in block play, through providing children with a range of rich and wonderful experiences and resources. Below are some ideas to support children:

• Have a range of fiction and non-fiction books around building and builder’s sites. This will give children knowledge and understanding that they can add into their story telling.

• Have a local builder come in and talk about their job or visit a local builder’s site to see what happens.

• Model to the children play and developing stories around available resources. For example, children might need to see an adult model how we use a spirit leveller to know how we use it.

• Add in small-world props and resources based on children’s interests – e.g. cars, toy people, animals, dinosaurs and so on.

• Provide story sacks or baskets with available resources to retell those familiar stories. For example, the 3 Billy Goats Gruff Book and puppets; with the building blocks. This may inspire the children to build their own bridge for the big bad troll to be hiding under and to retell the story. This can either be left as a provocation to see what the children do with it or it can be an adult directed activity where you work together to build the bridge and scaffold the children as they work and retell the story altogether.

• Add dressing up items such as hard hats and high visibility jackets, to encourage them to role-play being builders.

• Have real resources such as tape measures, rulers, spirit levellers and so on to support children to act out those experiences using the props around them.

• Encourage children to share with others and talk about what they have built and describe it.

Join us for our next running of our webinar, ‘The Potential of Block Play in the Early Years’ on the 1st September 2022 at 7:30 pm

Guest Blog: Love-Based Management Approach

Written by Victoria McAvoy

My name is Victoria, and I am the nursery Principal for Belmont Farm Nursery School in Mill Hill. We hold 110 children a day and have a large staff team to match. I have a passion for childcare, and truly believe that the first 5 years of a child’s life are the most important and believe we are so lucky as nursery workers to be a part of that.

Having your staff team all following the same ethos can be challenging but is essential for the learning outcomes of the children to be delivered. I follow the ‘love-based’ management approach, put simply this is all about respecting your staff and understanding that they have a life outside of the setting. I have personally found the ‘love-based’ management approach allows your staff team to feel appreciated, respected and listen to. I have then found the same is then given back to myself and my deputies.

Ways in which I use the love-based approach are:

- Showing appreciation

This could be a thank you note, a kind word or walking through the classroom and finding three positive things to mention. We also have a rewards app we use to send recognitions and provide ‘perks.

- Offer encouragement

If I notice someone is struggling, I will always lend a hand and support them through that situation, to help them gain confidence and self-belief. Saying well done for how something is handled or hearing that you are proud will give the pride needed to continue the good practice. If we don’t encourage or guide good practice, how do we expect staff to know what they are doing is the right way for the setting.

- Open door policy

I have an open-door policy for my office space, the door is only closed for confidential meetings. Having a safe space for the staff to be able to come and chat about anything that is on their mind is improving mental health within the setting and actually allowing for some great changes.

- Gaining opinions of the staff team

The staff team on the floor are the ones trying out all the managers ideas, gaining feedback on what works and what doesn’t is a great way for the team to feel listen to and respected. If I am coming up with new ideas, I will hold a senior meeting (room managers, 3rd in charge and deputies) where the idea will be put out to them, for them to share their opinion on if it will work on the floor. If they feel it won’t work, I ask for other ways we can reach this goal/an alternative they think could be a good idea. We also hand out regular staff questionnaires and then share the feedback with a ‘what you said, what we have changed’ this is another great way for staff to see you are listening to them and making the changes you can make.

- All members of management to be on the same page

This may be the most important part, I have regular meetings with my deputies, third in charge and room managers. My goals, targets and ethos need to match my senior teams’ views of the nursery and what it can achieve. Without my senior team on the same page as me, following the same ‘love-based’ approach the nursery would not run as well as it does.

- Getting the team on the same page

This becomes a lot easier once the senior team are believing in the vision and following the same management style! A similar approach by gaining ideas from everyone, asking questions, and gaining feedback. I get the staff to review the curriculum regularly and ask what they do well and what they can improve/add on from it. Giving staff members the space to come up with ideas for their classroom based on the ethos of the nursery gives the staff the time to understand the ethos and how it can reflect into the classrooms. I also spend a lot of time in the classrooms, as does my deputy so we can show how we understand the day to day of a room, and that we can practice what we preach. If the staff are not seeing your practice, it can cause friction when something isn’t working or not established enough yet as they will feel you do not understand. Staying connected to the children helps to remind me what I got into childcare for in the first place.

I truly believe if we show our staff that they are cared for and thought of in the day to day running of the setting, as well as thought of in terms of their life outside of the setting it supports the atmosphere around the nursery to be a positive place to work. Working in a positive environment not only makes the staff happy to be at work, it makes the children’s day more enjoyable and the learning opportunities greater. If the staff care about the nursery as much as you do, the possibilities are endless.

Block Play and Mathematical Development in the Early Years

Welcome to our next series in our block play series. This week we are going to be focusing on how block play can support children developing their mathematical skills through construction play. Mathematics is literally all around us and when children are playing and engaging, there is always potential for lots of opportunities to develop across all areas of the curriculum. Hands on experiences give children opportunities to learn about mathematics in a variety of contexts.

To find out more about mathematics being all around us why not check out our webinar recording ‘Mathematical All Around Us’.

Measuring in Block Play

Children use play to replicate their experiences and things that they observe others doing. This is an important way that children make connection and sense of the world around them. The introduction of resources such as tape measures and rulers can support children as they look at measuring their buildings and constructions. As they make comparisons about size, height and length of their buildings and constructions.

(Photo Credit: Pinterest)

Often this replication although supporting children’s ability to add narrative to their play and storylines alongside others (remember before children can write a story, they need to be able to tell stories with others!). But it can be limited by children’s mathematical skills, as to use a ruler or tape measure they often must understand and know large numbers to interact with this mathematical concept. Consider introducing resources that children can use that are non-standard units such as a set of handprints, multilink, footprints or Duplo. This means the children will be able to count the objects and incorporate mathematics into their play without adult support with large numbers.

Children will also problem solve, measure, and make comparisons of size and use a rich array of mathematical vocabulary such as bigger, smaller, tiny, longer, little, huge, shorter, and so on without the introduction of standard and non-standard units. As they join in conversations, they talk about their building and make comparisons. While they participate collaboratively to develop ideas. To stretch their understanding and their limits.

(Photo Credit: Project Matters)

A classic early year’s example, often children explore building towers often setting the challenge to see who can build a tower taller than themselves. This instantly lends itself to some discussions about size, as children may begin to make remarks such as “It is smaller than me!” Or “it is bigger than me!” This is a great opportunity for us as early years practitioners to extend learning in the moment. For example, introducing new language such as height, width, length and modelling a vast array of mathematical language. As we build and play alongside the children and build towers and make comparisons. There is also the opportunity to make comparisons between towers, for example, “How many blocks taller than you is your tower?”

Symmetry in Block Play

As children progress through the stages of block play in stage five (patterns and symmetry) they begin to make symmetrical buildings. This means that they are beginning to develop a basic understanding of symmetry and looking closely at patterns and similarities in buildings. They will also be developing an understanding of shapes and numbers as they explore making sure that they put the same shape and number of blocks in either side of the invisible line. For example, I need to red blocks, and one large brown cylinder and one large orange cylinder for either side. We may even begin to show a practical understanding of doubles or putting numbers together and learning simple number bonds.

Exploring Symmetry

When thinking about children who are beginning to explore symmetry and patterns in their block play. You might want to consider:

Do you have different coloured and shaped blocks?

Can you introduce mirrors to play and photos?

Can you bring in art activities that explore patterns and symmetry?

Making Buildings

Some children will be in the stage of block play when they are beginning to make representation of buildings. This is a great time to be incorporating house photos, and photos of different types of buildings where children can start to explore and talk about the natural patterns and symmetry in buildings. Additionally, think about adding clipboards and pens to promote early mark-making where children can design their own buildings.

Building designs can easily bring in mathematical concepts and vocabulary for example, sharing size of bricks, how many? Or does your building have windows? Whether that is part of a discussion or shared mark-making or individual mark-making with a skilled practitioner. You can easily build in children’s mathematical vocabulary and skills as they design and create their very own buildings.

If you would like to join our webinar, ‘The Potential of Block Play in the Early Years’ please click below to find out more or purchase your ticket now.