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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 children pretend to play doctors you completely strip your h...

Supporting Children’s Emotional Security

As practitioners, we spend a huge amount of time and energy making sure our learning environments meet and extend the physical developmental needs of the children within our care, but how much thought do we put specifically into their emotional needs?

My three initial areas to consider in promoting emotional security within our provision are safety, fostering home school links, and is above all, that it’s relevant.

Safety is obviously at the core of Early Years provision. As practitioners we all understand that children have basic needs; to be kept safe from dangers, warm, fed and have adequate rest, but I’d argue that their emotional wellbeing is just as important. In order to keep children emotionally safe we need to be pleased to see them, value them, have time for them, know them, listen to them, and care about helping them to develop their understanding of emotions. We need to ensure our provision gives ample opportunities and r...

In this video from our Free 5 Day challenge (Join for FREE here) we explore how to document and support child led interests. 

By the end of our 5 days of training together you will be enthused to make learning happen outdoors and have a bank of knowledge and ideas on how to make it happen. Taking inspiration from Scandinavia.

I walk you through bringing more nature into your day through a series of short sessions and a little task for you to try. 

Day 1: Why nature based learning is needed
Day 2: Daily rhythm in nature
Day 3: Creating an environment for outdoor learning
Day 4: Child Led Learning in nature
Day 5: Provocations in nature

Kimberly 

Creating a Purposeful Early Learning Environment

Creating interesting and purposeful early learning environments is something we all strive to do, but whose purpose are we talking about here? I imagine we’d all immediately jump in and claim it’s for the child, but in reality, there are often a number of other people that we end up considering.

Are they for us as practitioners? Whilst we’d all love to imagine that our environments are directed towards child lead learning, many of us operate within systems that mean we find ourselves often steering children round to a next step or learning goal that we need to prove they’ve met. Sometimes I’ve even desperately re-set children up so as to take a good evidence photo to go along with the observation I’m about to report in great detail. Who is that for? Did it help the child? Or did I interrupt their purposeful activity and are they about to ask that question… “can I go and play now?” Other considerations we have to make are our avai...

Outdoor provision is an effective tool in empowering children to engage with their learning through experimenting, questioning and reasoning. We love to incorporate outdoor play with all aspects of the EYFS curriculum as we feel children learn best when they are encouraged to be active agents in their own learning. Where the natural space allows children to freely make sense of the world around them through their interactions with play, where mathematical opportunities are endless including: weighing, size ordering, number recognition, problem solving and estimating.

In our garden, as many of you might know if you have signed up to the Wanderlust Nature Study Course, we have enhanced elements of our garden to create invitations to play and learn. The weighing scales next to our Mud Kitchen allow the children to experiment with mathematical language such as ‘heavier’ ‘lighter’ ‘balance’ ‘more’ ‘a lot’ as they add or take away pinecones, pebbles, sticks. This experience outside is far...

Take a watch of my daily dose of Hygge where i look at how we can transition back into setting in a smooth and calm way. 

When we talk about outdoor learning, our minds turn to an escape from technology and the digital world.  Connecting with nature is refreshing, cleansing and vital, as is disconnecting from the world of screens, however, does this mean that technology does not have a place in outdoor learning? I argue that this is not the case and that there are many ways in which it can develop and enhance learning.

When we are exploring nature and observing the world around us, we are taking in so many things that we just cannot observe in our homes or settings. One of the most vital bits of kit in our outdoor adventures bag is a camera. Digital cameras (and phone cameras) have incredible resolution which enables children to capture a very accurate image of exactly what they have seen - this image becomes a freeze frame of a memory! Something that you can revisit and talk about within your setting - a way to bring nature in with you.  You can closely observe details of creatures and plants that pe...

Fostering a Language Rich Environment

 In some areas of the UK, more than 50% of children entering reception are assessed as having language levels below what is expected for their age. Now whilst there’s a complex range of issues surrounding this, such as how we measure and assess children at this young age, and the parameters upon which we measure this, there’s no denying that language is a necessary and life enriching skill that we all want the children in our care to develop a real love for.

To begin with, language is used as a way of the child having their needs met. Whether this is learning to ask for ‘more’, to participate in and steer play, or the soothing lull of songs and bedtime stories. As their skills deepen and increase in complexity, language is used further to enrich their lives and satisfy social and emotional needs.

 So how do we foster this development and enjoyment by creating an environment that is language rich? An environment that nurtures successful talkers...

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Let me show you my shed, my ‘Aladdin’s cave’ of Childminding treasures. That’s how I would describe my Childminding Shed. It was my first purchase when I moved into our house, before I kept everything in drawers. Surrounding me in my house morning noon and night, piled up so high even I couldn’t find anything. Now after 4 years of rearranging, collecting, rooting through car boot sales and Charity shops, sourcing through friends, family, parents of mindees, various websites and social platforms. I finally have it the way I want it.

I can stand and survey my kingdom and wait for inspiration to grab me. Or, with the children to guide me through there eyes gather the objects in a basket like I was choosing pick and mix at a sweet shop. Everything is arranged in sections. Two shelves of loose parts:

Natural - Pinecones, bamboo pieces, shells, wooden pieces, glass nuggets.

Recycled – Plastic bottle tops, bottle t...

As you have previously read on our blogs you would have learnt that we love being outside with the children each day so we thought we would share our top tips for keeping the children active whilst in the outside. Did you know that young children need to be active for at least 180 minutes a day?

In the garden we do lots of planting and include the children in digging the soil, pulling weeds and also harvesting potatoes which as well as physical activity has many other rich learning opportunities included such as caring for plants, learning where our food comes from as well as many maths skills such as size ordering, estimating and counting. We also use our wheelbarrow to transport our weeds and potatoes in as well as carrying the full watering case to water our plants.

Children love to help and enjoy little tasks so ask them to help - there are many jobs that they can do such as water the plants, pick the weeds etc. This encourages them to build resilience, self worth and also builds...