Posts tagged 'Nursery'

Facilitating play can be a complex role for Early Years practitioners. Early Years expert, Emma Davis, explores the importance of child-led play and how to strike a balance between the role of observer and facilitator.

Introducing loose parts play into a setting can be a hugely empowering and valuable experience.  As practitioners, our role is to facilitate an enabling and inspiring environment for children and incorporating loose parts into our provision can help us to achieve this.

Often, January is a time for reflection and making plans. Time for Nurseries consider the coming year, setting objectives and mapping out the spring and summer terms.  However, things are much different this year, making it more of a challenge to look ahead.  It is difficult to predict what might be happening next month, let alone the remainder of the year. This can make it challenging for nurseries to think ahead, in a time which is still incredibly uncertain.  There is no way of knowing if COVID will impact further on the Early Years sector and how.  Although the current circumstances means it will be difficult to plan, it’s still important to reflect on our provision and practice and use this to feed into the coming months. 

In the past two weeks, children in Early Years have been making their way back to settings in light of recent government announcements around easing the lockdown.

However, official statistics published by the Department for Education suggest that families still think it’s too soon. Just 10% of the usual number of children are attending settings.

Following two months of disruption, schools are preparing to go back, and we know this will be an unsettling time for everyone involved.

The best classroom and the richest cupboard are roofed only by the sky.'

Margaret McMillan.

In this blog post, we'll be thinking about the outdoor environment and its capacity for promoting learning and development within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The outside is a completely different entity from the indoor environment in every respect. It should not be a replication of the indoors as it can be a powerful learning space in its own right. The ever-changing environment opens up a wealth of possibilities for children and adults to experience, explore and investigate together. It's less restricted than the four walls which enclose indoor play so the power of the outdoor environment is huge!