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 Exploration and Investigation Designing and Making ICT Time Place Communities
Birth-11 Months
 
  • Provide a range of everyday objects for babies to explore and investigate.
 
  • Provide objects that give young babies opportunities to explore textures, shapes and sizes.
 
  • Provide a range of playthings that excite babies' attention, including battery-operated mobiles and wind-up radios.
 
  • Provide pictures or photographs of things associated with regular routines.
 
  • Provide spaces that give young babies different views of their surroundings, such as a soft play area, with different levels to explore.
 
  • Ask parents to share photographs of special people from home and place them where babies can see them.
8-20 Months
 
  • Plan varied arrangements of equipment and materials that can be used with babies in a variety of ways to maintain interest and provide challenges.
 
  • Provide a range of resources that babies can use in their play that encourage their interest in balancing and building things.
 
  • Have available robust resources with knobs, flaps, keys or shutters.
 
  • Ask parents about significant events in their babies' day and how these are talked about, for example, "boboes" for sleep or bedtime, "din-din" for dinner time.
 
  • Display and talk about photographs of babies' favourite places.
 
  • Collect and share some stories and songs that parents and babies use at home.
16-26 Months
 
  • Provide materials that support particular schemas, for example, things to throw, for a child who is exploring trajectory.
  • Find out from parents about their children's interests and discuss how they can be encouraged.
  • Plan for inclusion of information from parents who do not speak English.
 
  • Provide a range of items to inspire young children's curiosity, ensuring that their investigations are conducted safely.
  • Provide culturally diverse artefacts and encourage parents to bring in culturally specific and familiar items from home to share.
 
  • Incorporate technology resources that children recognise into their play, such as a camera.
 
  • Collect stories that focus on the sequence of routines, for example, getting dressed, asking "How do I put it on?".
 
  • Develop use of the outdoors so that young children can investigate features, for example, a mound, a path or a wall.
 
  • Give opportunities for talk with other children, visitors and adults.
22-36 Months
 
  • 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.
 
  • Build on children's particular interests by adding resources to sustain and extend their efforts.
 
  • Provide safe equipment to play with, such as torches, transistor radios or karaoke machines.
 
  • Provide opportunities for children to work through routines in role-play, such as putting a 'baby' to bed.
 
  • Provide story and information books about places, such as a zoo or the beach, to build on visits to real places.
 
  • Provide a soft toy for children to take home overnight, in turn. Talk with children about what the toy has done during these excursions.
30-50 Months
 
  • Use the local area for exploring both the built and the natural environment.
  • Provide opportunities to observe things closely through a variety of means, including magnifiers and photographs.
 
  • Provide ideas and stimuli for children, for example, photographs, books, visits and close observation of buildings.
  • Provide a range of tools, for example, scissors, hole punch, stapler, junior hacksaw, glue spreader, rolling pin, cutter, knife, grater, and encourage children to handle them carefully and use their correct names.
 
  • When out in the locality, ask children to help to press the button at the pelican crossing, or speak into an intercom to tell somebody you have come back to the setting.
 
  • Plan time when children can discuss past events in their lives, such as what they did in the holidays or what happened when they went to have a splinter removed from their hand.
  • Ask parents to share photographs from home that show things such as a sunflower that their child took home from school in a pot, which has now grown taller than them.
  • Ensure the full participation of children learning English as an additional language by offering additional visual support and encouraging children to use their home language.
 
  • Plan time for visits to the local area.
  • Provide play maps and small-world equipment for children to create their own environments.
 
  • Plan time to listen to children wanting to talk about significant events and give them time to formulate thoughts and words to express feelings. Provide the support of adults who share languages other than English with children.
  • Provide ways of preserving memories of special events, for example, making a book, collecting photographs, tape recording, drawing and writing.
  • Invite children and families with experiences of living in other countries to bring in photographs and objects from their home cultures including those from family members living in different areas of the UK and abroad.
40-60+ Months
 
  • Give opportunities to record findings by, for example, drawing, writing, making a model or photographing.
  • Provide a range of materials and objects to play with that work in different ways for different purposes, for example, egg whisk, torch, other household implements, pulleys, construction kits and tape recorder.
  • Encourage children to speculate on the reasons why things happen or how things work.
 
  • Make links with children's experiences to provide opportunities to design and make things, such as a ladder for Anansi the spider (in the West African traditional tale).
  • Provide opportunities for children to practise skills, initiate and plan simple projects, and find their own solutions in the design and making process.
  • Ensure that the organisation of workshop areas allows children real choices of techniques, materials and resources.
 
  • Provide a range of programmable toys, as well as equipment involving ICT, such as computers.
 
  • Provide long-term growing projects, for example, sowing seeds or looking after chicken eggs.
  • Provide reference material for children to use, for example, comparing old and recent photographs.
  • Draw on the local community to support projects about the seasons. Tap into knowledge and expertise of local farmers, gardeners, allotment holders and so on.
 
  • Provide stories that help children to make sense of different environments.
  • Provide stimuli and resources for children to create simple maps and plans, paintings, drawings and models of observations of known and imaginary landscapes.
  • Give opportunities to design practical, attractive environments, for example, taking care of the flowerbeds or organising equipment outdoors.
 
  • Provide opportunities for children to sample food from a variety of cultures, such as a traditional Caribbean dish.
  • Provide books that show a range of languages, dress and customs.
  • Use appropriate resources at circle time to enable children to learn positive attitudes and behaviour towards people who are different to themselves.
  • Ensure the use of modern photographs of parts of the world that are commonly stereotyped and misrepresented.