Discuss with staff and parents how each child responds to activities, adults and their peers. Build on this to plan future activities and experiences for each child.
As children differ in their degree of self-assurance, plan to convey to each child that you appreciate them and their efforts.
Consult with parents about children's varying levels of confidence in different situations.
Self-confidence and Self-esteem
Record individual achievements which reflect significant progress for every child: one may have stepped on the slide, another may be starting to play readily with others.
Seek and exchange information with parents about young children's concerns, so that they can be reassured if they feel uncertain.
Making Relationships
Create areas in which children can sit and chat with friends, such as a snug den.
Behaviour and Self-control
Have agreed procedures outlining how to respond to changes in children's behaviour.
Share policies and practice with parents, ensuring an accurate two-way exchange of information through an interpreter or through translated materials, where necessary.
Self-care
Allow children to pour their own drinks, serve their own food, choose a story, hold a puppet or water a plant.
Choose some stories that highlight the consequences of choices.
Provide pictures or objects representing options to support children in making and expressing choices.
Sense of Community
Share photographs of children's families, friends, pets or favourite people.
Communication, Language and Literacy
Planning and resourcing
Language for Communication
Display pictures and photographs showing familiar events, objects and activities and talk about them with the children.
Provide activities which help children to learn to distinguish differences in sounds, word patterns and rhythms.
Language for Thinking
Include things which excite young children's curiosity, such as hats, bubbles, shells, story books, seeds and snails.
Provide activities, such as cooking, where talk is used to anticipate or initiate what children will be doing, for example, "We need some eggs. Let's see if we can find some in here".
Plan to encourage correct use of language by telling repetitive stories, and playing games which involve repetition of words or phrases.
Linking Sounds and Letters
Use puppets and other props to encourage listening and responding when singing a familiar song or reading from a story book.
Reading
Provide stories, pictures and puppets which allow children to experience and talk about how characters feel.
Provide dual language books to raise awareness of different scripts. Try to match dual language books to languages spoken by families in the setting. Remember not all languages have written forms and not all families are literate either in English, or in a different home language.
Writing
Provide materials which reflect a cultural spread, so that children see symbols and marks with which they are familiar, for example, Chinese script on a fabric shopping bag.
Handwriting
Vary the range of tools and equipment located with familiar activities, for example, put small scoops, rakes or sticks with the sand.
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Planning and resourcing
Numbers as Labels and for Counting
Introduce number labels to use outdoors for car number plates, house and bus numbers.
Create a 'number rich' environment in the home play area. Introduce numbers as they are used at home, by having a clock, a telephone and a washing machine.
Keep a diary with the children about their favourite things. Talk about how many like apples, or which of them watches a particular TV programme at home.
Calculating
Provide props for children to act out counting songs and rhymes.
Provide games and equipment that offer opportunities for counting, such as skittles.
Plan to incorporate a mathematical component in areas such as the sand, water or other play areas.
Shape, Space and Measures
Collect pictures that illustrate the use of shapes and patterns from a variety of cultures, for example, Arabic designs.
Provide opportunities for children to measure time (sand timer), weight (balances) and measure (non-standard units).
Vary the use of volume and capacity equipment in the sand, water and other play areas to maintain interest.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Planning and resourcing
Exploration and Investigation
Make use of outdoor areas to give opportunities for investigations of the natural world, for example, provide chimes, streamers, windmills and bubbles to investigate the effects of wind.
Designing and Making
Build on children's particular interests by adding resources to sustain and extend their efforts.
ICT
Provide safe equipment to play with, such as torches, transistor radios or karaoke machines.
Time
Provide opportunities for children to work through routines in role-play, such as putting a 'baby' to bed.
Place
Provide story and information books about places, such as a zoo or the beach, to build on visits to real places.
Communities
Provide a soft toy for children to take home overnight, in turn. Talk with children about what the toy has done during these excursions.
Physical Development
Planning and resourcing
Movement and Space
Provide a range of large play equipment that can be used in different ways, such as boxes, ladders, 'A' frames and barrels.
Plan time for children to experiment with equipment and to practise their skills.
Undertake risk assessment and provide safe spaces where children can move freely. Create 'zones' for some activities and explain safety to children and parents.
Plan to respect individual progress and preoccupations. Allow time for exploration and for children to practise movements they choose.
Provide real and role-play opportunities for children to create pathways, for example, road layouts, 'taking the pushchair to the home corner' or 'going on a picnic'.
Provide CD and tape players, scarves, streamers and musical instruments so that children can respond spontaneously to music.
Plan activities that involve moving and stopping, such as musical bumps.
Health and Bodily Awareness
Ensure children's safety, while not unduly inhibiting their risk-taking.
Display a colourful daily menu showing healthy meals and snacks and discuss choices with the children, reminding them, for example, that they tried something previously and might like to try it again.
Be aware of eating habits at home and of the different ways people eat their food. For example, some families use hands to eat and some cultures strongly discourage the use of the left hand for eating.
Using Equipment and Materials
Resource the home play area with cooking utensils and babies' clothes so that children can handle tools and materials meaningfully in their imaginative play.
Provide 'tool boxes' containing things that make marks, so that children can explore their use both indoors and outdoors.
Creative Development
Planning and resourcing
Being Creative - Responding to Experiences, Expressing and Communicating Ideas
Provide props such as streamers for children to wave to make swirling lines, or place shiny mobiles, made from unwanted CDs, in the trees to whirl around in the wind.
Exploring Media and Materials
Choose unusual or interesting materials and resources that inspire exploration such as textured wall coverings, raffia, string, translucent paper or water-based glues with colour added.
Creating Music and Dance
Invite dancers and musicians from theatre groups, the locality or a nearby school so that children begin to experience live performances.
Draw on a wide range of musicians and story-tellers from a variety of cultural backgrounds to extend children's experiences and to reflect their cultural heritages.
Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play
Offer additional resources reflecting interests such as tunics, cloaks and bags.
