Blog

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...

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...

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...

Budgets are always tight. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you work in a private nursery, school or children’s centre, there just never seems to be enough money to go around, so practitioners have learnt to be a pretty thrifty and hoarding bunch. Here are a few of my favourite sources for free goodies:

Recycling – This is where I always start. Your own recycling bin can be such a treasure trove of items, from turning plastic packaging into plant pots to boxes for junk modelling. I also think teaching children to re-use and reimagine single use packaging items helps them learn to give value to things in today’s throwaway society. One of my favourite things to keep is corks. They can be used for so many things and to enhance so many areas, from loose parts, to playdough or water stations (they float so are often re-imagined as boats). This week I’ve even been making them into small world figures! They’re a good size too and are warm and soft to the touch so make a very tactile and s...