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  Planning and resourcing
Dispositions and Attitudes
 
  • 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]

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Video

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.

Video

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.