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When it comes to organising our Early Years environment setting up high quality continuous provision is crucial.  It allows young children to be active learners that are in charge of their own learning while also developing key skills that allow them to flourish as life long learners.  

What exactly is continuous provision I hear you ask? It is the every day environment that you create in your setting that's consistently available to the children each and every day and what they can use freely. It's not just about the resources we have available here but it's also about the way we as adults challenge and support the learners through our interactions with the children and the way the daily rhythm is organised. The environment that we create must also be reflective of the cohort of children that we have working with us today and change in response to our observations and knowledge of their needs and interests. 

Traditionally we may have waited to make changes to our learning environmen...

Guest Post by childminder Jodie Williams @jodiewilliamschildminding 

Teaching children about nature and giving them the opportunity to be outdoors exploring is a very important part of our day. I found the child thrived when doing outdoor activities especially in the local woodland areas.

They love to collect objects, bringing them back to the setting and incorporating them into their play and exploration.

Over the past year it has become more important to be able to be outdoors, exploring in our own little group setting. Which has helped all of us to cope with the current pandemic & changes.

This is why I have now started to change how I teach and the resources I use. I haven’t got much space to store lots of one use resources. So this change has definitely allowed me to minimise resources to ones that provide the most learning opportunities.

We now have a lovely collection of natural resources. A variety of baskets containing small logs, log slices, stones, & sticks. Also ...

Children are so highly creative and learn to express their world and what’s around them in their own unique way from an early age.

Yet often we as adults try to stifle this creative freedom.

Perhaps by showing children how we expect their painting of a pumpkin to look and only offering one paint colour.

Maybe setting up a craft station where all the children have to make a paper spider with pipe cleaner legs.

Or

How about giving children templates, outlines to colour in or pre-determined shapes to use in their craft activity.

These stop us from focussing on the process of the learning and instead give the child the message that the outcome is what’s important here.

Instead talk to the children, “Ok so you want to make a representation of the bumblebee you saw outside, what materials shall we use? What colours would work best here? What shape will you make the body? How would be the best way to create the stripes?’

Consider the creative freedom you offer ...

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...

Growing plants and veggies with the children

As you all know we love being outdoors so this week we chose to share with you our growing and planting adventures.

We feel that children should be aware of where their food comes from and this way they can learn and experience this first hand as well as taking ownership in caring for their plants each day. We feel there are many benefits in doing this including educational as well as opening more time outdoors.

The children are always keen to help in the garden . We plant many veggies and also keep chickens. They like to feed the chickens snacks and collect the eggs which they enjoy for their lunch. We also use these for our baking sessions too.

We visit the garden centre often to buy our supplies such as compost, seed potatoes and seeds which encourages independence choosing and paying for the items. One little girl has a toy bunny which she takes every where - during our last visit to the garden centre she picked up a packet of car...

Story telling/ small world play and nature

As a setting we are always outside exploring the outdoors whether it be the beach, woods, National Trust places or simply our garden. We feel being outdoors is as important as introducing books and rhymes into the children’s every day life so why not combine the two. We do this regularly and will pack props and story books based on the themes and childrens interests into our daily bag and take them out with us.

 We find that by using props out and about grasps the children’s attention a lot more than sitting and listening on a rug. The children want to be involved, they want to take turns to hold the props - they will also use the props to retell and re enact the story later on in their play. Recently we visited a local National Trust place and explored the mud kitchen - we took Tiger who came to Tea story with us as it is a favourite and we felt that this would link in beautifully with the physical play around the mud kitchen. We read the s...

By Jennifer Wooldridge @mamasden

Today marks the start of our next 3 weeks of lockdown but i’m hoping that the next 3 weeks are going to be easier than the first 3 weeks now that we have adjusted to our new normal, adopting a new rhythm and discovered our new routine. I am somehow managing to find time to engage the children including my son by including lots of nature play and science. I’m focusing our activities by playing to their strengths and following their interests.

I think that the main thing I will take from all of this is that my children can lead their own learning if I listen to their play and conversations and then throw in a little bit of sit down learning in line with this. But we are largely spending our time playing and learning in the moment and I really want this period of time to be reflected on as a fun family period rather than a scary, uncertain time.

So instead of focusing on one particular topic this week I thought I would share with you my top 5 lockdown r...

How do you resource opportunities for small world play? As an early years teacher I would ensure I had small world opportunities in every area of provision. For instance adding small world creatures and loose parts to my malleable area and observe how children make their own props for imaginative story telling. My maths area would also offer challenges around a small world problem in KS1 provision. ‘Like the pirates have found some coins and have to make a total of 20 for Captain Blackbeard by adding coins together.’

Here are some of my top ingredients for resources and organisation.

-Offer small world and block play together.
-Add collections of loose parts to encourage creativity and imaginative story telling. See right brained mom for ideas.
-Foliage- real and artificial
-Add a light element; projectors, light box, rope lights and fairy lights.
-Take small world outside and use natural settings
-Mirrors
-Mark making equipment available
-peg people
-Offer different backgrounds like woven p...

Today we're joined by guest blog writer Nicola Hacking (follow at the curious case of the girl and the dog) sharing her love for nature and the impact on our wellbeing. 

The importance, role and vision of outdoor access in the early years has increased in leaps and bounds over previous years. We’re seeing a move away from traditional learning, with nurseries developing fabulous free-flow access, inspiring outdoor equipment and even ones based entirely outdoors in natural spaces. Children draw in the dirt with sticks, sing from the branches of trees and snooze lazily in hammocks, snuggled up in layers of cozy clothing. Practitioners hand out hot chocolates and giggle as they sneak an extra marshmallow for themselves and try not to develop too bad a t-shirt tan.

But why the shift? Or is it something in our very souls that’s been trying to burst out?

Scientific research tells us that time spent outdoors reaps a multitude of health benefits. These include improved blood pressur...

A wonderful guest post by my member Jennifer Wooldridge (@mamasden)

Are you settling into your new rhythm?

Change can be really hard and they say it actually takes up to 7 weeks before we adapt. Think about times you may have been on a new health drive, whether a diet or starting at the gym the first few weeks are always the hardest.

We all have a daily routine which we are used to but now have to create a new balance in our lives, a rhythm at home over the coming weeks and this will help establish a new normal, a new sense of balance in our lives. I know we have all been feeling anxious of late but we need to start reflecting on the change and creating a new calm in our family lives.

Let’s take this time to recharge our batteries and to think about what we have taken for granted and the fast paced lifestyle we are used to. We have all had to stop and think and change our ways, whether willingly or for the greater good. But for lots of our children they have lost their routine an...