Category

Early Years Development

5 Top Tips to increase Role-Play for toddlers 16/10/2020
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How To Encourage Toddler Role Play

This article has been written by mum of two and youth theatre leader Jen, from Raising2Children, who shares her top tips on how to increase and encourage toddler role play. There are many role-play benefits for children and these benefits are eloquently listed in the ‘importance of imaginative play’ blog post. As I write this article, I am envisaging a 3-year-old. However, every child has different abilities which can be celebrated and validated. So, focusing on ‘stage’ rather than their ‘age’ is key in toddler role-play. 5 Top Tips To... Read More

Outdoor Maths 18/09/2020
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Tips and Tricks on Taking Maths Outside!

During these unprecedented times we are always looking at ways in which we can adapt and switch up the environment we work in. Now more than ever we are looking for new ways that children can learn numeracy in a safe environment. Whether this is in Primary School or Nursery, with your Childminder or Homeschooling, we have the tips and tricks to adapt your usual teaching style to suit your outdoor maths lessons. So why not take the children outdoors and use the endless amount of space to explore how... Read More

how children learn through play and types of learners in early years 20/05/2020
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How Children Learn Through Play

This article has been written by early years consultant, Anne Rodgers from ATR Consultancy, who explains the different ways children learn through play and shares tips for how you can support them. Children have different ways in which they learn through play. By recognising their individual learning styles, we can help them to develop. There are 4 different types of learning styles: Visual Kinaesthetic Auditory Logical Visual Learners: Visual learners learn through seeing. They may like to sit at the front of the classroom at story time so they can... Read More

tray play benefits 11/03/2020
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The Benefits of Tray Play

This article has been written by mother of two and tray play advocate, Rachel Moffatt. How does tray play benefit children? Learning through play is the main focus of the early years foundation stage. It is all about making learning fun. Tray play provides a focused area of play with the contents ‘somewhat contained’. Setting out inviting activities with cognitive and physical challenges has a significant benefit to early childhood development. Tray play gives children the opportunity to explore and discover independently, and fosters their creativity and imagination. There are... Read More

10/03/2020
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What Is Numicon & Why Is It Important?

Did you know that Numicon, the multi-sensory classroom resource, grew out of a classroom-based research project? It was funded by the Teacher Training Agency and created by Numicon authors Ruth Atkinson, Romey Tacon and Dr Tony Wing. Numicon is a mathematics teaching approach that was designed to help children understand maths. This new approach has grown through the years into a highly successful teaching resource and is now the market-leading UK primary school maths programme. It is based on the popular and highly effective concrete-pictorial-abstract approach (CPA). Numicon sets and... Read More

17/01/2020
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Why Don’t They All Learn Well Through Play?

This article has been written by Ellie Collar from Early Years SEN. I am an early years practitioner and I have worked with Flitters. You know the children who play like butterflies, circling the play environment but never really engaging with anything long enough to extend their play or use the language you planned for it to stimulate? Those children who play well if an adult is there to extend and model, but drift away once the adult leaves? Those children who live for the bikes outside and spend much... Read More

14/05/2019
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How to Make a Story Add up

This article has been written by storytelling specialists, Tonya and Natasha, from Little Creative Days. They will be delivering two EYR Workshops on Friday 28th June 2019 ‘Introducing Maths with Stories‘ followed by ‘Taking Stories Outside‘ >> Learn more  When you’re thinking of teaching children about maths how many of you think of reaching for a story? It’s probably not your first thought and I suspect you go for a box of bricks or counters first. But using a story can make learning maths a whole lot of fun and... Read More

sensory play in early years 24/01/2019
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Sensory Play in The Early Years

This article has been written by early years consultant, Anne Rodgers, from ATR Consultancy. What is sensory play? Sensory play includes activities that stimulate children’s senses such as sight, sound, smell, taste or touch. By providing this type of activity children will learn more about the world around them in a natural way, through their senses. Such activities contribute to brain development by stimulating the neurons in the brain to make connections, and help with development in all areas of learning. For example, as children explore sensory materials they develop... Read More

13/12/2018
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Why parents engaging with their child’s stories is key

This article has been written by storytelling specialists, Tonya and Natasha, from Little Creative Days  Why parents engaging with their child’s stories is the key to boosting their language and communication skills Did you know that the more words that a child knows by the age of 8 is the biggest predictor of their future success, regardless of their social and economic background? It’s also been established that children with poor vocabulary at the age of 5 are more than twice as likely to be unemployed by the age of... Read More

06/11/2018
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How can parents boost their child’s vocabulary?

This article has been written by storytelling specialists, Tonya and Natasha, from Little Creative Days  A child learning to speak their first words is one of those magical times and once they start there’s usually no stopping them. But children need to know how to put those words into context and there’s no better way of doing that than with a story! Unfortunately, not all parents read to their children and this can be for any number of reasons. It may be that their parents didn’t do it with them... Read More