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‘Put your coat on Joe’
‘Jumper on Evie!’

The weather creates a brilliant way for us to learn key life skills but if we find ourselves just telling children what to do they won’t always understand the why.

Instead we can use experiences as a learning tool. Sometimes we need to let children go outside for a few minutes without a coat in winter but make sure our adult interactions support a learning opportunity here. Talking to the children about the weather, the way the coldness feels on the skin, wondering with the child what they could do to stay warmer. Linking back moments and other experiences. ‘Remember when we went to the farm last week and the wind was blowing and we were so cold. We wished we had our hats on to keep our ears warm!’

I also like to talk about the weather with the children as part of our morning meeting. Checking the weather forecast together and opening up discussions about what to wear, or to predict what might...

As the weather starts to change and we move into the Autumn this has to be one of my favourite times of the year to spend time outside with young children. There is just so much to see and discover! Here are a few ideas to get you started...

Go on an autumn walk 

Head for a local walk and see what natural treasures can you collect that show you signs of Autumn? You might give children a numbered paper bag and see if they can collect that amount. Or how about giving each child a colour swatch card and matching nature to their shade?

Forage
Go foraging for berries and come back and bake a fruit crumble!

Gruffalo
Read the story of the Gruffalo and retell it outside! Set up a small world scene or retell with actions outside.

Go for a heather hunt
Did you know spotting white heather is a sign of  good luck? Why not take a walk and explore the smell of heather. You might try some heather honey or do some observational paintings of heather outside.

Make a leaf crown
Go on a...

Here are a few tried and tested ways to start the new school year in a smooth way.

A tour of the school/ setting in small groups and showing who works in school and what they do. 

Tour of your provision in small groups and giving little teams the same tidy up job to do each day.

Share some getting to know you stories like Owl Babies. Offering children the chance to talk about who’s important to them and the things they like. 

No phonics or maths sessions! Instead have a focus here on building relationships and developing a routine. Lots of small group circle times and getting to know you games. Lots of opportunities to revisit phase 1 of letters and sounds. 

Make birthday crowns and display these around your setting. When it's a child's birthday they then get to wear it for the day!

A focus on good sitting, good looking, good listening during small group time. I like to reinforce the spoken words with makaton actions and symbols too.

I used to love...

In this weeks blog article my lovely member Nikki,  a daycare manager of a nursery based in Leeds, shares with us how she supports the wellbeing of her team. 

I suffer from burn out. I have done for years. I think Early years lends itself to never ending to do lists and wanting to get it right for children, families and the team. I now know I have to plan self-care in to my routine to look after myself. I make sure I spend time outside throughout the week (usually at the local nature reserve), I use a meditation app daily and to support my sleep and in the darker months I use my daylight lamp to improve my SAD (Seasonal affective disorder). These changes to my life style is what led me to discovering Hygge and then Hygge in the early years.

As early years practitioners we know the importance of children's wellbeing, we even go as far as to monitoring wellbeing levels using the Leuvens scale. We are also aware that low wellbeing results in low levels of involvement and...

My obsession with classroom environments began when I first visited St John’s C of E Primary School. From the moment I walked in I was struck by the calm atmosphere and serenity it brought to their children. My colleague and I whispered to each other is disbelief “it’s just so calm”. Upon walking back into my own classroom I was smacked in the face with bright colours and loud noises! Everything felt over stimulating and busy by comparison; as if there were balls of high energy bouncing around the walls! From then onwards I was hooked into finding ways of calming my classroom and moulding the environment to generate the same serene feeling I’d experienced at St John’s.

I began with the lights! First of all, I wanted to reduce the lighting, I’m lucky to have two large windows and a half glass door within my room; meaning that most days there is sufficient natural light filling the space. So I borrowed a set of ladders and set about...

Many of you are worried that due the pandemic all the hard work you’ve done over the last year on the ethos of your practice and the learning environment has to go.

I’ve heard of heart broken reception teachers having to sit their children at desks in rows, display boards getting ripped down and child led learning getting lost.

We can’t let this happen.

And…

It doesn’t need to happen.

In this blog post I’m going to share with you some thoughts on how we can keep that hygge feeling without losing all of the hard work we’ve already done.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves what hygge is. Hygge is the Danish approach to living well that focuses on being in the moment and embracing the feelings of warmth, simplicity and togetherness.

It’s not just about how your physical environment is set up (although this contributes to it) but it’s about slowing down to be present in the very...

I get asked all the time...'Where do you get your resources from?'

So let me share this with you (please note these are all personal recommendations and not ads or gifted products)

Firstly, many of the resources we use in Early Years can be collected, reclaimed or re-used for free. Some of my favourite summer loose parts are;

When it comes to buying resources i have always worked in schools and settings with very little money to spend on resourcing. Any money that we did have would be spent on;

1. High quality staffing

2. Block Play resources

3. Books

4. Small world imaginative play

I feel that when we spend our budget in this way we support open ended and holistic child led learning. We also have the staffing in place to support, challenge and extend the learning. 

Block Play

Block play is one resource that allows all areas of learning to happen and is great for supporting child led play and exploration. I have always invested in buying unit blocks from Community Play...

Have you ever spent ages setting up a play and they either ignore it, “destroy it” or play for a few moments then walk off? Yes, me too! Imagine being placed in a room with just the books a friend owns, you read a few pages and realise they are not to your taste and so you quickly get bored. Well for a child, that’s likely what they must feel in a room full of adult driven themed set ups for them to explore. Up until about a year ago I was very “theme” driven and planned the themes for every term, and often recycled them the following year.  But do you really know whether those children in your setting will be interested in People Who Help Us for an entire half term in Summer 2?

When children have a fascination, it’s vital we use that as a vessel to fuel their curiosity and motivation to learn through play. How do we know what they are interested in? We watch, observe and respectfully question. Now I’m not saying if a few...