Physical Development and Block Play

Blog Post One in Our Block Play Series

Construction play is a firm staple of many early year’s settings, whether that be through Duplo, wooden blocks, Lego, large blocks, or community play blocks and everything else in between. We use a wide array of items to support children’s learning and development. Join us for our new series that will look at block play in early years settings. This first blog is going to look at how block play can support children’s physical development.

Many years ago, I was in a meeting with an Occupational Therapist (OT), and she shared with us, how much she loved the fact we used Lego in the preschool. She sat there and said, “Lego is just amazing, and is exactly what Child A needs to support his physical development!” This made me smile so much, because it is so true and often, we can forget the value of the everyday toys or equipment we use and how they support children’s learning and development.

I guess in the very simplistic term, we can forget the why we purchased those resources in the first place. Or perhaps they just form part or our continuous provision and environment because it is just ingrained and that is how it has always been. At the moment in the early years, it is very refreshing that we are really unpacking our practise, pedagogy, curriculum and enabling environments. We are thinking about the why or intent behind everything that we are doing, and the implementation (how we are doing it) and the impact (the difference it makes to children’s learning, development and well-being.

Do you want to explore the topic of intent, implementation and impact more? Why not join out webinar, ‘Exploring the 3I’s: Intent Implementation and Impact’?

So, let’s go back to the Lego and think about some of the physical skills that children are developing when they are building with construction toys such as Lego, Mega Blocks or Duplo that connect:

·         They are developing the strength and muscles in their fingers, hands, and arms as they push the items together and pull bricks apart.

·         Developing fine motor skills.

·         Developing their hand-eye coordination.

·         Developing wrist, elbow and shoulder pivots.

·         Developing spatial awareness.

·         Developing bilateral coordination (this is having control over both sides of the bodies, to coordinate movement and the development of both sides of the brain talking to one another).

This is true for lots of block play activities, children are learning to balance, control over small muscles and movements, spatial awareness so that they do not knock their towers down and bilateral coordination. We also know that when children are exploring building with big blocks, we are also supporting those larger gross motor skills and coordination as children move and negotiate space as they build. Quite simply there are many benefits to children’s physical development by participating in block play.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next blog post in our series that will look at how block play can be enhanced to incorporate early literacy development.

Do you want to explore the potential of block play more? Why not join our webinar, The Potential of Block Play in Your Continuous Provision?

Guest blog - Five tips for marketing your nursery or pre-school

In this guest blog, I will be sharing my five tips for marketing your nursery and pre-school. I know from experience of supporting my sister over the years that often settings do not have a dedicated marketing resource and fall to nursery or pre-school managers to take this on alongside your other responsibilities. Therefore, my suggestions below are easy to implement ideas and tips that shouldn’t take too much of your time up, but have good results.

Tip 1 - Know your audience

Spend a little bit time thinking about who you are trying to reach with your marketing activity and what barriers and motivations they have when looking for a nursery. You can then tap into addressing any barriers in your key messages for campaigns. For example, if they are worried about funding, have content that talks about how the funding works and what support you can provide with getting it set up.

Some key things to know about your audience are:

• What is your geographic target audience? 

• What age group children are you looking for? This can help you with running more targeted campaigns across Meta (Facebook products) or Google. 

• Are they likely to be funded places? Or non-funded

• What time of year do parents look at nurseries or pre-schools? This will give you insight into when to up your marketing activity.

Tip 2 - Make the most of the meta-verse (beyond Facebook)

Paid adverts are a great way to extend your reach to new audiences. Since Facebook became Meta, they are really focusing on how advertising campaigns can be across multiple social platforms they own and this gives you a chance to go to where your audience is.

I quite often see people do boosted posts, but my top tip is to take the time and set it up in ad manager, as this gives you the opportunity to do different placements (e.g. also have it in Instagram stories or affiliate sites) and also more detailed targeting to ensure you are reaching the right people. Start small, test what works and then build it up over time.

Tip 3 - Balance your social media asks

I was always taught really early on in my career I was taught the 70/30 rule and I think it really still applies today. The rule is that 70% of your content should be focused on community building and 30% should be focused on your sales messages. This makes sure that you have balance in terms of the mixture of messages you have going out and makes it more interesting for your target audience. 

Your audience will love anything that gives them an insight into what your nursery or pre-school is like and the experience their child would get.

Tip 4 - Strengthen your website

Your website is your shop window for prospective parents, so think about what would reassure them and make them feel better about sending their child to nursery. For example, could you have content about transitions, the approach you take in your nursery and testimonials. Testimonials are a great way to reinforce the quality of your service and mean more than anything you could say yourself about the quality.

Tip 5 - Google adwords - find the people that are already looking

Search adverts are a great way to reach people that are “in-market”. By this I mean people that are actively searching for nursery or pre-schools in your geographic area. Making them a great audience to go after. These are loads of guides available from google adwords to get you started and they will even give you recommendations on how to optimise your adverts once they are running.

Natasha Milsted, Chartered Marketer

Natasha Milsted is a Chartered Marketer with a first-class degree in marketing, a professional diploma in marketing and is currently completing my MBA with the Open University. She is an experienced marketing leader with over 15 years’ experience in delivering high performing marketing campaigns and strategies.

Buy a template marketing plan

Start planning for September by purchasing Growing Togethers template marketing plan and decide what your marketing focus will be for the next year.

World Ocean Day

Wednesday 8th June 2022

Wednesday the 8th June 2022 is World Ocean Day, many early years settings and professionals will be using this as a platform for discussion with young children. So, we thought we would write a blog post focusing on, what is world ocean day, how can we celebrate it with children to extend their cultural capital and interests in a fun and age-appropriate way.

What is world ocean day?

The United Nations theme for world ocean day this year is “Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean”. The focus is about sharing and understanding that the ocean is important to all of us, it supports our sustainability, but we know the health of the ocean is in danger. It is a call to action to work together to help raise awareness and act as a community to improve the health of the ocean. You can find out more about it here.

Why focus on world ocean day with young children?

At Growing Together Developing Early Years we are passionate about how our children are the future generation and it is important that from a very young age we teach children and empower them to love our world and look after it. By inspiring a young generation to look after and care for the world from an early age, they will take these values on hopefully for their whole lives and continue to inspire future generations.

Recommended books:

We can start to teach children from a very young-age in an age-appropriate way, which encourages them to begin to ask questions, talk and act upon this important issue. Below are some of my favourite books for this topic:

·         Duffy’s Lucky Escape by Ellie Jackson and Liz Oldmeadow

·         Marli’s Tangled Tale by Ellie Jackson and Laura Collwood

·         What a Waste by Jess French

5 Activity ideas:

1.       World Ocean Tuff Tray – have a tuff tray with small world sea animals and water so children can explore habitats that live in the ocean. You could use spaghetti as seaweed to add a more textural feel to the activity.

2.       Pollution Water Tray – to start discussions about pollution in the ocean and litter, you could raid the recycle bin and place (clean) rubbish alongside the small world animals in the water tray.

3.       Visit an Aquarium – this is a great opportunity for children to learn about the magnificent animals that live in the ocean. You can also find a fabulous virtual aquarium here that you can use in your setting.

4.       Ocean Stick Puppets – Add some story telling into your ocean play and encourage children to make their very own stick puppets. All you need is lollypop sticks, pens, paper, scissors and sticky tape. Encourage the children to draw their very own ocean animals e.g. fish, dolphins, jellyfish, turtles and so on. Once they have drawn them, they can cut them out and stick them to a lollypop stick and voila you can make up your own stories. For younger children, you might want to use a template of animals to support them.

5.       Under the Sea Small World Area – Turn your small world area into a vehicle to take the children under the sea. Below are some photos of my very own ocean small world area, following a group of children’s interests.

Check out our Facebook page on 8th June 2022 for more inspiring #worldoceanday activities or tag us @GrowingTogetherDevelopingEarlyYears in your very own ocean inspired fun tomorrow.

Part Two: Teaching Colours in the Early Years

Last week’s blog explored what we meant by teaching in the early years. This week part two is going to explore how do children learn and develop their knowledge of colours through our curriculum that we use to teach them. Curriculum in its very simplest terms, is the framework for what we would like children to learn in the time that they are with us. This is one big composite (end goal) made up of many small components. Sam Sleeman-Boss and Wendy Radcliff from Ofsted at the childcare and education expo (2022) defined curriculum thinking as “the framework for setting our aims of a program of education, including the knowledge and skills to be gained at each stage.”

It is refreshing to remember that the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Educational Programs, lay the foundation or floor of our curriculum, but we develop our curriculum to help children reach for the stars. It simply doesn’t cover all the small steps, components and learning opportunities that children have in their time in the settings, which is based on the knowledge of a skilled practitioner. An example of this is that, by the end of their time in nursery with us we might want children to be able to express themselves through the careful selection of colour, identifying colours and communicating why. Children don’t simply learn these skills or information though through a quick transference of knowledge and information, they learn them through an ambitious curriculum that is made up of many components or small steps to help them reach the end goal by the end of their time with us.

This is done through hands on experiences in the early years that encourage exploratory learning, collaboration, and the opportunity to develop ideas alongside others. For example, we may start with our very youngest by that simple exploration of contrasts in colours. We know that babies are interested in those contrasts and that black, white, and red supports brain development We then might explore mark-making with different colours using those gross motor skills and movement of our whole bodies and begin to name the different colours that we make. Before doing matching and classifying by sorting, identifying, making patterns and so on. As the children continue to explore, we look at shades and mix different colours, but also recall how they make colours through a variety of activities, using paint, light boxes, messy play and so on. Before, we move onto that being creative using colour to express ourselves and carefully selecting those colours, there are many steps that children go through, in their journey of learning about colours in the early years.

Below are some activity ideas for teaching colours in the early years:

Part One: Teaching Colours in the Early Years

I recently saw a very interesting post online, where someone was asking for support for how do we teach children colours in the early years? Which spiralled into a very lengthy discussions about what we mean by the word teach, but also whether children should be taught their colours and how do we fully embrace this. I watched this conversation online unfold, quietly, as I saw some strong opinions and ideas coming through and this was something that I wanted to talk about in a more constructive way. As naturally, this conversation got me thinking, it sparked a consideration for me on two topics, what do we mean when we say “teaching” in our early years setting?

As well as the how do children learn and develop their knowledge of colours through our curriculum? This will look different across all settings as we are unique, we are different, but also, we have our curriculum and what we want children to learn in the early years. To me on a personal level, colour exploration has always been a part of my curriculum and what children develop a knowledge off over the time that they are with me. Mainly because children are naturally curious about exploring mixing colours, I mean how many times do they make a lovely icky brown out of all your bright beautiful colours?

What do we mean by ‘teaching’ in early years settings?

So, let’s unpack to begin with what are we defining as teaching in the early years. I think the confusion about what teaching is perceived like or thought of is muddied by those traditional views of teaching. Where a more knowledgeable adult, imparts information and knowledge and children sponge it up, and repeat what they have been told. Where in traditional method of teaching the teacher or educator is seen as powerful over the learning environment.

However, our view of teaching in the early years is different to this. We understand that in teaching we are collaborators with the children, we join to share that information. This is underpinned by the theoretical ideas such as Vygotsky, who talks about the zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the concept that the learner alongside a more experienced peer (this does not have to be an adult), has a higher level of potential for learning and development, through engagement with one another. This is through careful interactions, scaffolding, and collaboration with one another.

The early years foundation stage refers to how high-quality settings engage in what is referred to as sustained shared thinking. Siraj Blatchford and colleagues defined sustained shared thinking as “An episode in which two or more individuals ‘work together’ in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate activities, extend a narrative etc. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend.” (REPEY, 2002) This was part of the EPPE and REPEY study that looked at what was high quality teaching in the early years.

In my mind this is what teaching is in the early years, tuning into the individual children’s interests, developmental needs, our interactions, and positive relationships that allow us to collaborate with the children as they learn and develop. One that is built upon neutral respect and ownership. An environment that encourages curiosity and children to ask open ended questions and work together to learn and solve problems. This is us teaching the children and we shouldn’t under value what we do in an early year setting, just because we do or do not have the word teacher before our name. Because we are all teaching the very foundations to children’s learning.

Join us for part two of this blog next week that will look at how do children learn and develop their knowledge of colours through our curriculum.

Global Recycling Day

18th March 2022

Will you as a setting be celebrating global recycling day with your children? This is a great opportunity to take stock and think about talking about recycling with young children. This does not mean I am saying we only need to focus on recycling one day a year in our settings, but by celebrating global recycling day it can help us to re-focus or be the day to start those new initiatives. Such as introducing a recycling bin for paper into the preschool room.

Why do I think it is important to cover recycling with children from an early age?

The children are the future. I know that sounds incredibly cheesy, but they are the future, and we want the world that they live in to be looked after. I think that as early years educators, teachers, practitioners, assistants, childminders, or apprentices, we have an important role in fostering a love for our world and environment that we live in. This means that part of what we teach children in the early years goes beyond the basics of the curriculum that is outlined in our educational programs; but I am passionate that in the early years we teach children how to look after the world that we live in.

Recycling is a simple topic that we can cover in the early years to begin to create that love for the world around us. As we talk about the importance of recycling and the 3r’s, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Also, by beginning to teach children to recycle in early childhood we will be setting good habits that children will hopefully develop for a lifetime.

Below, is the series of ideas that we have been sharing on social media to support you re-focusing on recycling this global recycling day:

Focus on Dough Disco

As part of our finger gym blog series, I wanted to talk about the wonderful benefits of dough disco to children’s learning and development. In particular development of those all-important physical skills, including both gross and fine motor that we develop in the early years. Finger gym is something that I am so passionate about making a difference to children’s development and learning, but also it is fun, creative, and engaging for young children. I was first exposed to finger gym several years ago when I went to the childcare expo and saw a demonstration by funky feet. If you don’t know who funky feet are click here, they will instantly make you fall in love with dough disco.

The songs are catchy, the movements are challenging and fun and most of all it is grounded in a good understanding of how children learn, grow, and develop. With links to how it supports development and growth and the reasons behind why dough disco is designed the way it is. A clear intention, before we even began to use the words intent, implementation, and impact in every conversation we had regarding the early year’s curriculum.

So, what are considered some of the numerous benefits of dough disco? Below are just a few:

·         Supports the development of children’s gross motor skills such as shoulder pivots, elbow pivots and wrist pivots that are all essential for early writing.

·         Helps to develop children fine motor skills (small movements)

·         Helps to develop the muscles in children’s hands.

·         Supports children’s communication and language development.

·         Promotes movements that cross the midlines in the body, which help promote brain activity and connection between ideas.

I will never forget the time I was doing finger gym in a nursery and became known by the local Occupational Therapist (OT) as the dough disco lady for many years to come. Who took the wonderfulness of dough disco back to the office with her and into numerous early years settings. So, if you haven’t tried out dough disco yet, what are you waiting for?

Check out our new playdough disco action cards here…why not encourage the children to sequence their own movements and actions along to their favourite songs. A great activity for promoting communication and language skills, personal social and emotional development, physical development and expressive arts and design.

Implementation of Finger Gym in Early Years Settings

Lasts weeks blog spoke about the intent and reasons behind why settings may choose to implement finger gym as part of their early years curriculum. This week we intend to unpack some of the ways that you may choose to implement finger gym within your setting. All settings are different and unique, and it is important to remember what works for you and your early years setting will not always work for other settings and that is fine. It is about finding things that work for you and being willing to try new activities and ways of implementing early years practise.

Finger Gym Area

Some settings will choose to have an area with your continuous provision, which is set up daily with access to items and activities that have a finger gym area. For example, a coffee table with a challenge of the day, such as, using lollypop sticks to catch bottle lids in a tray of water. Or a small shelf selection with two or three provocations or challenges on the shelfs. Or open-ended resources such as, jumbo tweezers, small loose parts and so on which children can explore in a more open-ended approach to finger gym.

Focused Group Time Activities

Some settings may choose to implement finger gym in a more structured way, by running focused sessions daily. This may be as part of support plans, interventions, or to work with children who have been identified to need support with a certain area of development and learning. Typically, it may be children that you feel need support with their physical development and focus work on their fine motor skills.

Incorporating Finger Gym Throughout Your Continuous Provision

Some settings will opt for introducing finger gym activities throughout their continuous provision and will not have a set space or time for finger gym to occur. For example, whilst following the children’s interests a practitioner, might not that the children are showing a particular interest in spider webs and spiders. She/he may then decide to set up the small world area a web using a linen basket and string and place lots of spiders inside for the children to save with tweezers.

Or it may be that your setting does a mixture of any of these approaches with implementing finger gym. I think when deciding how you are going to implement finger gym in your early years settings it is important to consider the impact that you want to have for the children in your setting, and think carefully about your intent and what you want the children to get out of finger gym sessions or activities in your early years setting.

Join us for our next blog in the series where we hear case studies from some early years settings about their intent, implementation, and impact of finger gym in their setting.

The Intent Behind Finger Gym

Currently in the early years we are thinking a lot about the 3I’s, Intent, Implementation, and Impact. As we saw the introduction of these three terms in the (2019) Early Years Inspection Framework, giving us the fantastic opportunity to reflect on our curriculum and what we want children to learn in the time that they are with us, our pedagogical approach and simply evaluate our practise from every aspect. The 3I’s in their simplest terms, our intent – the reason why we do something, implementation – the how we are going to do that, and the impact the difference our actions make.

Finger gym is a regular part of early years practise with settings across the world having finger gym sessions, activities, or areas as part of your curriculum. Curriculum in its simplest terms is what you want the children to learn in the time that they are with you and the stages that you see children go through. (To find out more about curriculum click here to our ‘Understanding Your Curriculum Webinar’). So, what is the intent the why behind finger gym being part of early years curriculum and practise?

Finger gym was developed with the understanding that in the early years we need to focus on supporting the following skills or abilities in our children:

·         Fine motor skills

·         The muscles in their hands

·         Hand-eye coordination

·         Dexterity

·         Communication and Language Skills

·         Can promote children’s cognitive skills

·         Fosters the characteristics of effective learning

With the focus of understanding that these skills are needed for children to be become successful writers and promote physical development. This is because children need those physical, social and communication skills before they are ready to pick up a pen.

Also, finger gym can easily be themed to topics, next steps and current interests of your groups, meaning that you can really tailor your comprehensive finger gym plan to support your individual children and setting. We know when we provide a more tailored activities to children’s interests then we see higher levels of engagement and involvement that result in higher levels of learning.

Keep an eye out for out next blog that will explore the implementation of finger gym, but if you are looking for some ideas before hand check out our 4 weeks of finger gym ideas here.

15 Things To Do With Playdough Before You Are Four

Playdough is a stable part of most of our continuous provision, as part of an area on its own or perhaps within a malleable area. Not only is it a versatile resource it is an inexpensive learning resource that can be used at home or in an early year setting. Playdough can easily be used to incorporate all areas of learning and help to extend children’s interests, independence, and self-esteem.

Therefore, we have created the following 15 things to do with playdough before the age of 4 years old. A perfect mix of activities and things to start trying in storm Eunice as you batten down the hatches and stay at home. Below is my trusted playdough recipe:

Playdough Recipe:

2 cups of plain flour

1 cup of salt

1 tablespoon of cream of tartar

1 tablespoon of oil

1 cup of boiling water from the kettle

(Optional add food colouring or essential oils)

Mix all the ingredients together and then knead until you have a nice dough.

Also, if want to explore more about developing that playdough provision in your early years setting, why not check out our recent recording of ‘Extending Learning Through Your Playdough Provision’ here.

Why We Are Stepping Up?

You may have noticed our current campaign step up this half-term and join one of the many options of continuous professional development that we offer. Whether that is one of our numerous recordings we now have available, meaning you can listen to them on a day and time that completely suits you. Heck, you can even pause me and come back to it! Did you know that once you have purchased one of your recording packages that download is yours forever? There are no time limits or even limits on how many times you watch it, it is truly yours forever and ever. Or perhaps you want to attend any one of the live events we are putting on this week. Did you know we are doing an incredible 14 live events? This is the week beginning 21st February 2022, we are sorry if this doesn’t coincide with your half-term; but we hope you might still be able to step up with us (on our Suffolk half-term!).

So, why? Good question why is this the week to do more webinars and really take the opportunity to invest in as much continuous professional development as we possibly can. We noticed after a year of doing our online training that we saw an increase of attendance in autumn and spring half-term. We took this as a message your were telling us as a company, we like to do continuous professional development in the half-terms. These have definitely been popular dates. We also appreciate that staffing in the early years sector is hard at the moment, we would even go as far as to say it is becoming a crisis. This makes term dates and training hard to release people during the day, or to exhausting after working so many hours during the day to then think about continuous professional development in the evenings. We really appreciate that we know that managing rotas, covering sickness and the many hats we wear means sometimes we can be to busy for continuous professional development.

As a company we passionately believe in the importance of engaging in training. So we hope this helps you out. By engaging in continuous professional development, it literally does help us to step up. We learn new things, we remember old ideas, we feel refreshed, renewed, we reflect on practise. All of this allows us to step up. To develop our role within our settings, to develop our professional practise and invest in ourselves. And in case you didn’t know it, you are most definitely worth it. So if you want to attend one of our 14 live events, check out what is on below:

• The New Revised Early Years Foundation Stage

• Promoting Oral Health in the Early Years

• Messy Early Mark-Makers

• Getting the Balance Right Between Continuous Provision and Direct Teaching

• De-Constructed Role-Play in the Early Years

• The Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Speech and Language Development

• Understanding Your Curriculum

• Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Mental Health

• Jargon Busters

• Language Development: Supporting Children with Stutters

• Let’s Talk Supervisions

• All About Pedagogy

• Supporting 2 Year Olds Communication and Language Development

• Managing Difficult Conversations with Parents

We hope you will join us to step up this half-term.

Pauline

Children’s Mental Health Week

Week Beginning 7th February 2022

The 7th February 2022 marks the first day of children’s mental health week. The theme this year for children’s mental health week is growing together. A rather fitting concept and idea, in the early years we spend a lot of time supporting children’s growth and emotional well-being through our relationships, nurturing, and stimulating environments and through supporting parents/carers. Although, we should be focusing on children’s mental health all year round, heading into next week is a great time to focus on how we support children’s emotional growth, as well as their physical and cognitive growth in the first 5 years of their live.

A lot of the research around children’s mental health out there is about children over the age of 5 years old. For example, we know that 1 in 6 children between the ages of 6 and 19 years old suffer with their mental health (Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner 2021). This is a shocking difference to 2017 figures of 1 in 9 children suffering with their mental health, this is an issue that deserves it time, reflection, and dedication to support our children. More and more, although it is not discussed as much, I hear practitioners talking about children who are experiencing mental health problems in the early years.

So, this mental health week I am going to encourage you to take the time to reflect on your practise and consider how are we supporting the mental health of children in the early years. Especially, focusing on this year’s theme ‘Growing Together’. When it comes to emotional growth, it doesn’t stop when we become adults it is a lifelong journey, but the children do start that growth and all-important foundations when they are with us in the early years. Foundations that will be built on for many years to come. And a pivotal part of that is learning to identify, talk about and recognise our emotions.

Places2be have developed some lovely resources for children’s mental health week, focusing on growth. These can be found by clicking here. For example, using stories about growth such as the very hungry caterpillar and taking the opportunity to talk to children about their own growth from birth to now. As well as resources from previous years that can be adapted for early years settings.

We also have some resources available on our website that can help you to support children’s mental health, emotional well-being, and personal social and emotional development in the early years. You can find these in our online shop by clicking here.

National Story Telling Week

29th January 2022 to 5th February 2022

Saturday will mark the start of this years, National Story Telling Week (NSTW). Quite often when we think about story telling we think about story time, with children sat on the floor listening to an adult read a book. This is not a wrong viewpoint, however, story telling goes beyond those books that we have written down. All of us enjoy listening to stories and even telling stories, even if it is about what Aunty May did last weekend or our recent holiday.

Stories are an important part of society, for generations we have passed stories down from generation to generation, with our traditional tales or folk laws. Families full of giggles as we sit and make up stories, as we share and enjoy time with one another or the bad Dad jokes that we are all familiar with. To a child reliving their experiences and acting them out in the role-play. Or even the words of songs that tell us a story, we see ourselves in them and we apply meaning or an interpretation of that music. Story telling can come in many forms and fundamental to our culture, cognition, literacy, and language development.

Often within my role as an early year’s consultant, but also in my years of experience working within nurseries I would hear the phrase “but I am not a good storyteller”. This makes my heart heavy, because I belief that everyone in society could tell a story, be a storyteller, not just authors and acclaimed writers, or performance artists. However, I know that for some people this can be a daunting experience. This is one of the reasons I developed the online webinar, ‘Developing the Storyteller Within’. (You can find out more by clicking here).

So, with NSTW fast approaching us, it made me consider this topic again. Perhaps with a renewed excitement and passion. We all have a personal story to tell, we all tell a story each day, even if we don’t realise it. For example, “You will never guess what…”. Or the classic, “The wind will change, and your face will stay like that”. These are all the beginnings of stories, or the end of stories handed down from generation to generation. So, let’s think about the power of harnessing those stories, sharing them with children but also developing stories alongside children.

We know that story telling can support children’s senses of belonging, personal social and emotional development, communication and language development, problems solving, literacy skills, and help them to work through those difficult situations they may encounter within their lives. Although, we know the benefits to our children’s learning and development, as well as well-being it can still be a daunting task of where to start in your early years setting. With this in mind, I have shared 3 starters to developing your storyteller within alongside the children.

1.       The story telling bag – this is a great activity for circle time or small group time with children to help get them involved in telling stories. In the story telling bags have different characters (e.g., people, animals, or mystical creatures) and pictures or items for setting or events (for example, photo of the beach, or fake snow). Start by taking something out of the bag and beginning to tell a story, before passing it onto a child to add to the story taking something out of the bag and continuing the story.

2.       Hot seating – hot seating is a popular way of getting children who are familiar with stories to explore characters and develop narratives. One person pretends to be someone from a story and other children ask questions, e.g. “Why did you go into the 3 bears house?” This gives the children the opportunity to develop the story more and think of their own responses.

3.       What happened next – start at the end of a familiar story and think about what might happen next. For example, “What happened after Goldilocks ran out of the 3 bears house?”

I hope this gives your inspiration to join in some story telling with your children for NSTW, keep your eyes peeled for our activity pack we will be realising in the next few days ‘Telling Your Story for National Story Telling Week’.

New Year, New Focus

Often this time of the year we find ourselves reflecting on the previous year and vowing to new years resolutions, change and a better year this year. I will let you into a secret, I have never been very good at new years resolutions, this year I will join the gym or any of those typical resolutions we feel the pressure to make. But when I was an early year’s managers one of the things that I loved to at the end of each new year and beginning of the next was to take the opportunity to reflect. To consider how much we had achieved in the last year, the amazing moments, we have had and what is next for the setting; where do we want to go?

I am sure there are many managers up and down the country thinking about their settings, the challenges of the past years, the achievements and the where next? New year is a fabulous time to refocus to think about developing those plans for the next year that are going to help your setting grow and develop. Carefully considering the intent, why you want to do things in the next year, to support staff development, to support children’s learning and development or to focus on well-being whatever it will be. And also, the implementation how are you going to do this to ensure that you have an impact – you make a difference to your setting.

As a company we can help you to re-focus this new year to support your setting in their journey. We offer audits, hourly consultancy visits and a wide range of face to face or online continuous professional development for staff. Over 2021 it has been incredible to have met so many practitioners face to face and virtually. We are passionate as a company about inspiring practitioners and working closely with you to develop your settings to improve practise to support children and their families. We cannot wait to support more of you as we move in 2022.

We have developed a resource for you a CPD planner that can be purchased here, to help you plan out your CPD for 2022.

Happy New Year!

Pauline

Beyond Phonics: There is More to Learning to Read then Just Phonics

Often when we think of supporting or helping children to learn to read, our minds automatically go to thinking about phonics. In particular, synthetic phonics, this is where words are broken up into the smallest units e.g., the individual sounds that comprise our words (phonemes) and we focus on the oral blending and segmenting of words. This is the putting sounds together to read a word but also the breaking down of words for spelling.

The emphasis on synthetic phonics was first introduced by the government over 20 years ago in 1998, alongside the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) (Chew 2018). Aiming to support literacy skills and development in the UK. And we saw the introduction of Letters and Sounds a synthetic phonics program that has been widely used in 2007, as another government documentation. With the focus of sharing an approach that would support teachers and practitioners in the UK to support children with their reading and literacy skills (DfE 2007). The structural program of teaching synthetic phonics between the ages of 5 and 7 years old is stated to be the most effective way of teaching children to read (Dfe 2013).

However, alongside a synthetic approach to phonics, we need to create a culture that understands that although research shows there is value to this approach it needs to be embedded in a much wider understanding of how children learn to read. There is more to learning to read then the simplistic skill of being able to sound out and break down words; but rather we develop communication and language skills, comprehension and a love for learning reading and books. This was emphasised by ‘The Simple View of Reading’ that demonstrates that “both word recognition processes and language comprehension need to be developed as children become readers” (Neaum 2021, p.14).

Above is a diagram of ‘The Simple View of Reading’, and ideally, we want our children to be in the top right quadrant to be the best readers that have both compression skills and word recognition processes. This means that alongside our systematic synthetic phonics approaches that we use in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage 1 (KS1), we also need to develop a language rich environment and curriculum.   

It is also important to remember that children’s literacy development and learning goes beyond the classroom or even before they start school. Through the development of their spoken language, developing a phonological awareness, an understanding of print around them within their environment and also as they interact with technology, for example, recognising the Morrisons logo, or knowing that says Peppa Pig. As well as additional physical and sensory skills that are developed from an early age before children are ready to read. For example, a child is playing with a balloon, and they are batting it backwards and forwards with you. They are physically tracking that balloon and its movement; this tracking skill is needed for when they begin to track the words across a page when they start to read. This all begins before children start school and is beyond simply learning the sounds that our a, b, c’s make, successful readers come from developing an understanding of a balanced approached to learning to read and write.

Do you want to find out more about the topic beyond phonics and learning to read in the early years foundation stage? We have an upcoming webinar on this topic that you can click here to book your space now.

Why I don’t Like Using Emoticons

I was having a conversation with someone the other day and I was sharing my dislike for using emoticons with young children. Firstly, I want to say this is a personal preference that I have as an early year’s teacher. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to use emoticons in text messages or an informal way as I communicate with friends and family. However, when working with children I steer clear of using emoticons. Even though it might feel cool, hip and relevant to children in modern times.

The main reason for this is that as children are learning to explore and understand their emotions, emoticons can cause confusion to them relating emotions to themselves. This is because when we use emoticons to display emotions such as sad, angry, happy, confused, shocked or surprised; it doesn’t necessarily relate to what emotions look like in us. It is much more relatable for young children to see those emotions in a photograph or mirror that can help them relate that make to their own feelings and emotions. Making it more powerful and relatable to those young minds, to portray what it might look like to feel those feelings in our body.

One of the most important things that we do in the early years is supporting children in learning to identify and understand those big and small emotions that we all experience. Part of doing this is relaying that it is natural and human for us to experience a vast range of emotions and to see these in other people. For example, how often do we catch ourselves saying things such as “I can see your feeling angry right now. That your firsts are clenched and your face is screwed up. What could we do to help you?”  Understanding how our bodies react to emotions and facial expressions is vital so that we develop empathy, but also an understanding of other people’s emotions once we have learnt to understand our own.

We know that only 7% of communication and language is verbal, the rest of how we communicate is non-verbal, our body language, our facial expressions and our tone of voice. Therefore, we need to support children in being good communicators and a big part of this is understanding body language and facial expressions, talking about it with our children and exploring them in a realistic way. So this is my main reasons for not  using emoticons for children.

World Nursery Rhyme Week: The Intent of Nursery Rhymes

10th -14th November 2025

World nursery rhyme week is here again. It is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate nursery rhymes in early years settings. To remember centuries worth of history, past from generation to generation that supports children’s learning and development. This blog posts explores the intent (why) behind singing nursery rhymes in early years settings with a particular focus on supporting speech, language and communication development, but also the question of quantity verses quality.

Why do we sing nursery rhymes?

Over the years research and our professional knowledge has shown many benefits to singing nursery rhymes with children. These are things such as:

• Supporting young children’s communication and language development.

• Increasing children’s vocabulary.

• A strong link between nursery rhymes supporting communication and language development and early literacy development.

• Helps children tune into rhythm and rhyme in nursery rhymes that is an important part of early phonics skills.

• Research has shown that children who know 8 nursery rhymes by the age of 4 years old are some of the best readers by the age of 8 years old (Meme Fox, Reading Magic).

• Can support all areas of cognition, for example, learning to recite numbers through number rhymes.

• Can help build children’s self-confidence.

• Supports attachments and emotional well-being in babies and young children as they bond with caregivers whilst singing rhymes together.

7 Nursery Rhyme Group Activities

£2.00

A pack of 7 carefully planned nursery rhyme group activities to support children’s learning and development. With clear instructions and outlines of what is needed to run each simple fun and engaging session. Each activity has a a bit of a twist on the way that you would normally sing the rhymes to make them fun and engaging for all.

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The Impact of Speech Language and Communication Needs

Nursery rhymes are proven to support communication and language development, increasing children’s understanding of language and also their vocabulary. Now more then ever we are seeing children start early years settings with a speech and language delay. NHS England (2019) states that “18–31% of children aged 19–21 months living in disadvantaged communities have language delay that warrants referral for specialist assessment.”. Additionally, NHS England (2019) states that 50% of children starting school from a socially disadvantaged background start school with a language delay or a Speech Language and Communication Need (SLCN). Additionally, research published by Speech and Language UK (2023) suggests that 1 in 5 (20%) children struggle with talking and understanding words. This is 1.9 million children in the UK! And that 80% of teachers feel that children are behind in talking.

This shows now more then ever the importance of focusing on nursery rhymes in the early years to support children’s SLCN, as part of a language rich curriculum. As well as supporting all children and going above and beyond to narrow the gaps in our societal inequalities based on social economical status. We can additionally see the long term impact of children being delayed in speech and language development. For example, Speech and Language UK (2023) report states the following staggering statistics, that children who are being in talking and understanding are 6 times more likely to be behind in English at age 11, 11 times more likely to behind in maths and twice as likely to be unemployed as an adult.

Before I Can Write Webinar Recording

£8.50

Here is a recorded version of our webinar, ‘Before I Can Write’. For individuals or teams to watch together as part of your continuous professional development. There is the opportunity to pause for discussions or self-reflection within the webinar. This recording has been made for those that have wanted to attend a live event but have not been able to.

This webinar explores how we cannot simply force children to write, before they are ready to learn to write there are many skills that they need to develop. This includes their communication and language, physical skills and imagination. This webinar begins to introduce some of the skills children need before they can write.

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Quality Verses Quantity

Meme Foxe, statement 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 is very encouraging when we think about how much children need to know in order to achieve. This is also highlights the point that it isn’t about quantity of singing rhymes, but actually the quality of the interaction with those rhymes and supporting children’s communication and language development through singing nursery rhymes.

This is reassuring for those of us that have ever felt the pressure, when we sing the same nursery rhymes over and over again in our setting; because they are the children’s favourites! But feeling like we have failed because we are singing again, baa baa black sheep or twinkle twinkle chocolate bar! Although as adults or practitioners we might feel exhausted or tired of the same old rhymes again, repetition is actually really important to young children’s learning and development. The more children repeat an action or activity the stronger the connections (synapses) in their brains come between that all important information.

We also know that when introducing new vocabulary to children with stories it is more beneficial for them to have the same story 3 times with the new vocabulary, then 3 different stories over the week with the same vocabulary. Children who have had the same story actually show a greater use and comprehension of the new vocabulary then their peers. (Raikes et al, 2006). I think that when we think about introducing nursery rhymes to children the same principle applies. It is much better to focus on one new rhyme at a time, then trying to learn the same vocabulary through many different rhymes. So be bold, don’t be scared of diving deep into those nursery rhymes. Don’t be afraid to sing the same one again, again and again.

Nursery Rhyme STEM - 5 Little Men Activity Pack

£2.00

An activity pack filled with ideas of supporting the nursery rhyme 5 little men in a flying saucer and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in the early years. Created by a passionate early years teacher.

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Blog post updated on 11/11/2025. Please do leave us a comment with your thoughts.

Alan’s Big Scary Teeth

This is a fantastic book to explore with children in the early years, especially for those children who are animal fanatics. You can take this book in many directions, as you think about a fun-loving alligator who loves to scare, with his big scary teeth. Part three of our oral hygiene series explores, how we can use this beautifully illustrated book, bound to make children laugh to promote good oral hygiene in the early years. Alan is an alligator with a secret, his teeth they are in fact false teeth. Alan wakes up one morning and has lost his teeth, can he still be scary without them? We are going to explore some ways you can use this story within your setting and tell it in a fun and exciting way, with extension activities.

Make a Story Sack

In the early years story sacks are a great way to engage children and keep them focused as you tell a story. They don’t have to be expensive, or shop brought, think about making a home-made story sack and collecting your own items to go alongside the book. For example, using a crocodile and animal puppets, having pretend teeth or false teeth for the children to see and touch and a book with your sack. Having story sacks prepped and ready to go for different books can help you in the busyness of the day (when you might not have time to gather everything for your story) but may also inspire yourself or your team in another way.

Tell the Story in a Sensory Way

Engaging all of children’s senses or using a couple of different ideas to engage senses within storytelling, helps to promote brain development, learning and help children to focus.

To download a PDF copy of this document for only £1, please click here.

Do you want to find out more about sensory story telling? Why not join out webinar, sensory story tellers in the early years? Click here to find out more.

Clean Alans Big Scary Teeth

As an extension of this story, you can have a go at cleaning Alans’s teeth afterwards. Simply use false teeth (or laminated pictures of teeth) and mark make on them with a whiteboard pen. Then use a toothbrush, toothpaste, and water to brush all the marks of the teeth.

Mirror Play

Can you scare as well as Alan? Set up some mirrors and pictures of people pulling scary faces and see if you can practise pulling a scary face just like Alan in the mirror. It is a great opportunity to talk with children about what makes a face scary and identify the different features of our faces. Children can also look closely at the teeth, eyes, and facial features. You can also incorporate some ICT by taking photos of each other pulling scary faces and add them to the display.

Another mirror play activity you can do is mark-making with toothpastes and toothbrushes on a mirror. This is great for developing children’s gross motor and fine motor skills, sensory development, and interest in making and exploring marks.

Keep an eye out for our next blog to find out, more books that you might use to promote oral hygiene in the early years.

Using Your Curriculum to Promote Oral Health in the Early Years

This is part two of our blogs on oral health and the revised early years framework. In this blog we are going to focus on how we can use our curriculum to support oral health in the early years. So firstly, let’s consider what do we mean by curriculum? In its simplest terms our curriculum is what we want children to learn. This includes the programme, methods, and activities that we choose to implement our curriculum; to ensure that children meet the learning intention highlighted in our curriculum.

 So, let’s consider – what do we want children to learn about oral health within the early years? It might be that you choose to base these on statements within development matters or birth to five matters. Or it may be that you want to come up with broader terms, such as those below.

“Our curriculum is designed to support teaching and children learning about oral health through a play-based and hands-on curriculum. We want children to learn about how to look after their teeth and the importance of good oral hygiene. Our curriculum is designed to support children’s learning and development in a holistic way, so that they develop good routines around oral hygiene and a healthy relationship with food.  As a setting our curriculum embeds learning and developing oral hygiene through our everyday interactions and routines, as well as our short-term and long-term planning. “

Below are a few ideas of what you might be interested in doing as activities or experiences as part of your curriculum to support oral health in the early years:

1.       Singing songs about brushing teeth and practising the circular motion that we use as we brush our teeth by doing actions.

The toothbrush on the teeth goes round and round,

round and round,

The toothbrush on the teeth goes round and round,

all day long.

(To the tune of the wheels on the bus)

2.       Sharing books and stories about going to the dentist (keep an eye out for our upcoming blog ‘Review of Top Ten Books to Promote Oral Health’)

3.       Tuff tray play -brushing fake teeth or small world animals’ teeth using toothbrushes and toothpaste.

4.       Draw on plastic blocks with whiteboard markers and use a toothbrush and toothpaste to clean of the marks.

5.       Get children familiar with the circular motion of brushing teeth big style, using those gross motor skills using toothbrushes to mark-make in shaving foam, coloured sand and paint.

6.       The egg experiment – boil eggs and pop them in different fluids for a few days, for example, coke, coffee, milk, water, juice, and squash. Talk about how the outside of the egg is like the enamel of your teeth, observe and talk about what has happened to the enamel and what those different things do to our teeth.

7.       Make an interactive display showing and measuring out how much sugar is in different common foods and drinks.

8.       Encourage children to join in cooking and making healthy snacks and foods and talk about the benefits of the different foods to our health.

9.       Heuristic play – all types of brushes basket. For toddlers and preschool children consider extending heuristic play by having a brush themed basket. For example, hairbrush, toilet brush, pastry brush, toothbrush and so on. As children explore the basket it gives you the opportunity to open discussion about purpose and function of different objects.

10.   Have a dentist or dental nurse come and visit your setting and talk about their job role.

Do you want to find out more about the revised framework, your curriculum or pedagogical approach? You might be interested in some of our upcoming webinars below:

·         Understanding Your Curriculum

·         The New Revised Framework

·         The Relationship between Pedagogy and Curriculum

Keep an eye out for our next blog in our oral health in the early years series…

Promoting Good Oral Health in the Early Years

September 2021 brought with it the introduction of the New Revised Framework in the Early Years. This has included a new requirement to the safeguarding and welfare requirements to promote good oral health of children. This does not mean overnight we are expected to become dentists or that we should be checking children’s teeth, however there are many ways that we can support children’s oral health.

Currently with the UK tooth decay in children costs the NHS (National Health Service) over £40 million a year (Guardian, 2020). This has become a huge burden on the NHS, but also, we can see a growing inequality amongst children from different social economic backgrounds. For example, The Child Dental Health Survey (2013) discovered:

“Children in more deprived areas have higher levels of tooth decay and are less likely to brush their teeth at least twice daily.”

Therefore, some settings, especially those in more deprived areas are deciding to opt into a supervised toothbrushing scheme. However, the introduction of promoting good oral health, does not mean it is compulsory for early years settings to participate in supervised toothbrushing. When considering whether you are or are not going to participate in supervised toothbrushing, I think it is important to reflect on the following questions:

·         What would be your intention behind doing supervised toothbrushing?

·         Do the sessions that your setting offer, fit in with being able to offer the toothbrushing scheme? (For example, 9-12 or 9-3 settings may struggle with this).

·         How would you practically implement the supervised toothbrushing scheme?

·         What would be the desired impact of children within your setting participating in the supervised toothbrushing scheme?

If as a setting you do decide to participate in a supervised toothbrushing scheme you can find guidance here on supervised toothbrushing in covid-19. You can also find PHE (Public Health England) guidance – Improving Oral Health: a toolkit to support commissioning of supervised toothbrushing programmes in the early years and schools’ settings by clicking here.

An image of the oral health home learning basket created by Lisa Brown at Happy tots Preschool in Ipswich.

Supervised toothbrushing is not the only way as early years practitioners that we can promote oral health for our children. Parental engagement and support are going to be so important as we get the messages out about good oral health. Through things such as the picture above where we have a home learning basket on the subject, story sacks, leaflets or activities sent home. To parent workshops focusing on good oral health and nutritional diets.

As early years settings we also have a responsibility to promote healthy eating and choices with children and one of the ways that we do this is through offering children a balanced diet that meets their nutritional needs. There is a very useful document that you can find here, with example menus for early years settings to ensure that we are providing a balanced diet for those children in our care.

Finally, we can use our curriculum (what we want children to learn), to help support children’s understanding of oral health from a young age. From providing specific activities, experiences and extending children’s cultural capital. Keep your eyes posted for our next blog where we discuss specific activities, ideas and provocations for promoting oral health with young children.