Devote uninterrupted time to babies when you can play with them. Be attentive and fully focused.
Plan time to share and reflect with parents on babies' progress and development, ensuring appropriate support is available where parents do not speak or understand English.
Where's Tyler - In a childminder's home, the childminder and the young toddler are involved in an interaction involving words, actions and touch. [transcript]
You can watch the video, via modem or slow / fast / superfast broadband connections. If you are behind a network firewall, why not click here to view a flash file of the video. You do need to have the flash plugin.
Self-confidence and Self-esteem
Provide a sofa or comfy chair so that parents, practitioners and young babies can sit together.
Have special toys for babies to hold while you are preparing their food, or gathering materials for a nappy change.
Plan to have times when babies and older siblings or friends can be together.
Ensure that babies feel safe and loved even when they are not the centre of adult attention.
Talking at the table - In a childminder's home, the childminder supports a small group of children, including a baby's non-verbal communication, at a shared snack time. [transcript]
You can watch the video via modem or slow / fast / superfast broadband connections. If you are behind a network firewall, why not click here to view a flash file of the video. You do need to have the flash plugin.
Making Relationships
Repeat greetings at the start and end of each session, so that young babies recognise and become familiar with these daily rituals.
Plan to have 'conversations' with young babies.
Share knowledge about languages with staff and parents and make a poster or book of greetings in all languages used within the setting and the community.
Behaviour and Self-control
Learn lullabies that children know from home and share them with others in the setting.
Play gentle music when babies are tired.
Self-care
Plan feeding times which take account of the individual cultural and feeding needs of young babies in your group.
There may be considerable variation in the way parents feed their children at home. Remember that some parents may need interpreter support.
Sense of Community
Provide a variety of cosy places with open views for babies to see people and things beyond the baby room.
Invite parents to share food and customs from their own cultures, including British cultures.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Planning and resourcing
Language for Communication
Display photographs showing the signs that tell us how young babies communicate.
Provide tapes and tape recorders so that parents can record familiar, comforting sounds, such as lullabies in home languages. Use these to help babies settle if they are tired or distressed.
Share favourite stories as babies are settling to sleep, or at other quiet times.
Language for Thinking
Provide resources that stimulate babies' interests such as a shiny bell, a book or a mirror.
Linking Sounds and Letters
Plan times when you can sing with young babies, encouraging them to join in exploration of their fingers and toes.
Reading
Collect a range of board books, cloth books and stories to share with young babies.
Writing
Provide gloop (cornflour and water) in small trays so babies can enjoy making marks in it.
Handwriting
Provide a variety of toys that encourage young babies to reach and grasp, for example, a baby gym.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Planning and resourcing
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Display favourite things in a lively, bright environment so that a young baby can see them.
Provide a small group of the same objects in treasure baskets, as well as single items, for example, two fir cones or three shells.
Calculating
Let babies see and hear the sequence of actions you go through as you carry out familiar routines.
Shape, Space and Measures
Display things to look at that encourage their interest in movement, such as a spiral.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Planning and resourcing
Exploration and Investigation
Provide a range of everyday objects for babies to explore and investigate.
Designing and Making
Provide objects that give young babies opportunities to explore textures, shapes and sizes.
ICT
Provide a range of playthings that excite babies' attention, including battery-operated mobiles and wind-up radios.
Time
Provide pictures or photographs of things associated with regular routines.
Place
Provide spaces that give young babies different views of their surroundings, such as a soft play area, with different levels to explore.
Communities
Ask parents to share photographs of special people from home and place them where babies can see them.
Physical Development
Planning and resourcing
Movement and Space
Have well-planned areas that allow babies maximum space to move, roll, stretch and explore in safety indoors and outdoors.
Provide resources that move or make a noise when touched to stimulate babies to reach out with their arms and legs.
Health and Bodily Awareness
Practise movement skills through games with beanbags, cones, balls and hoops.
Plan feeding times that take account of the individual and cultural feeding needs of young babies, remembering that some babies may be used to being fed while sitting on the lap of a familiar adult.
Introduce baby massage sessions that make young babies feel nurtured and promote a sense of well-being.
Using Equipment and Materials
Have baskets of small colourful toys near to where you feed a young baby, or attached to the pram, buggy or soft chair.
Provide objects to be sucked, pulled, squeezed and held, to encourage the development of fine motor skills.
Creative Development
Planning and resourcing
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Make available resources such as soft feathers, silk squares and pom-poms which offer sensory interest to young babies.
Exploring Media and Materials
Make a basket of things each baby likes to explore. One may prefer all the squashy things such as sponges, soft toys or balls, another may prefer crinkly, noisy things.
Creating Music and Dance
Select toys that will make different sounds, such as a wooden cylinder with a little bell or a small toy that squeaks, and talk about the sounds babies hear when they mouth or hold them.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
Have a variety of familiar toys and playthings that babies enjoy looking at, listening to, touching, grasping and squeezing.
