EYFS Goals Display - Understanding the World A set of large hexagons for displaying all the Early Learning Goals for Understanding the World, as part of - High quality downloadable teaching resource from Teacher's Pet.
The Foundation Blocks series makes it easy to implement the Department of Education's new, revised Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (September 2012). The books are clearly laid out, with one activity per page, attractive illustrations and cross references to popular early years topics. Written by experienced early years practitioners, these books will be an invaluable resource for anyone working with 3-5 year olds. This book contains activities for the prime area of Personal, Social and Emotional Development and the specific areas of Understanding the World and Mathematics. The activities will encourage children to develop self-confidence; to form positive attitudes and relationships; and to learn how to manage their feelings and behaviour within a group. They offer opportunities for children to experience their environment and community; to explore, observe and find out about people, animals and places; to investigate and experiment; and to begin to use technology. They will help children to develop and improve skills in counting, addition and subtraction; in understanding and using numbers; in problem solving; and in describing and comparing shapes, spaces and measures.
Help children learn about the weather with this lovely cut and stick activity. Supports Understanding the World and Expressive Arts & Design.
We resume our series of articles that look at the possibilities for play and learning inherent in certain popular and common early years resources and materials – this month, we look at small world scenarios.
The Empowered Educator - Working with the Framework Learning Outcomes – Part 1 LINKING
Explore science with young children (ages 3-5) through play with PSTT's Early Years science resources. Download the Effective Practice Guide and find activities, strategies, and provision examples to support EYFS practitioners.
Learn about the importance of stories in bridging together cultural differences in this blog written by storytelling specialists, Tonya and Natasha, from Little Creative Days
With this Daily Weather Display, children can cut out the diffferent weather squares to help them idenfity what the weather is like each day.
Geography is one of those subjects that I admittedly don't focus on much in the early years. We start small with learning how to read maps and understanding just what geography is - the layout of the world, our country and state.
Bright and engaging colour display sheets for hanging up around the classroom and using as a lesson resource to help remind young learners of their colours.
We help organizations and thought-leaders in telling their stories and ideas visually. We Leverage Sketchnotes to Synthesize and Simplify Ideas Enable Learning Provoke Thinking and Reflection Connect People With Ideas Facilitate Conversations Inspire Better Performance Why Visuals Work? We combine our "hands-on" leadership experience with visual tools like sketchnotes to offer: Visual Facilitation and Collaboration
Does small world play benefit children? Small world play refers to imaginative play with ‘small’ toys, encouraging children to use their imaginations and create both everyday and fantasy worlds in familiar surroundings.
Learn about early childhood education and what resources we can offer to ensure your child develops all the necessary skills between 0 and 8 years of age.
Little ones can learn Spring vocabulary with these flashcards! Words are paired with pictures to help young children learn in a fun and engaging way.
Create a Math Block I can't say this enough. An effective math block will help you tremendously! It creates routine and structure that you need to make sure everyone is on task. This is what I include in my math block: Engaging Mini Lessons Math centers Independent practice visuals throughout the classroom Use A
Practice sequences with this science activity about germs! Kids can demonstrate the best hand washing techniques. Sequencing acitivity.
A Student's Guide
Explore science with young children (ages 3-5) through play with PSTT's Early Years science resources. Download the Effective Practice Guide and find activities, strategies, and provision examples to support EYFS practitioners.
This lovely colouring worksheet features a rainbow template. Children learn the seven colours of the rainbow as they colour in stripes with colour words.
Search for treasure with this fun game! It is a wonderful indoor activity for kids. Create their treasure map by cutting out the different objects.
The Empowered Educator - How AI Can Help Uncover and Support Children's Sensory Preferences
The Little Learner Book is an interactive busy book for preschool that contains 13 activities and a total of 53 pages. The activities are divided into 4 areas of child development: understanding the world, STEM, language and communication and social and emotional development.
Welcome to Teacher's Pet your one stop shop for all of the very best in classroom resources including, posters, labels, games, activities, challenge cards, bunting and so, so much more!
Bright and colourful posters for the new 7 areas of early years learning: 1.Personal, Social and Emotional Development 2.Communication and Language 3.Understanding of the World 4.Physical Development 5.Expressive Arts and Design 6.Literacy 7.Mathematics 8. A4 lettering is also included for all areas, great for creating classroom learning areas
Learn more about From Play to Practice
Search for treasure with this fun game! It is a wonderful outdoor activity for kids. Create their treasure map by cutting out the different objects.
Build problem solving skills with this super galactic worksheet! Help the astronaut find their way by to the rocket, then colour the picture.
Enjoy learning letters with this charming worksheet that unites a fun colouring activity with learning the letter "B". Supports Early Literacy.
Learn about different colours and build fine motor skills when colouring the cupackes. Free on Word to download, print and share!
The Empowered Educator - How AI Can Help Uncover and Support Children's Sensory Preferences
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. Engaging in small world play is so important for children. Not only does it nurture their imagination, it also enables them to explore new materials, act out scenarios from real life, build language, practice social skills and gain an understanding of the world around them. In the first of our Resources for Play series I share 10 of my favourite small world toys and resources. I love setting up small worlds for my children and I'm constantly inspired by the most amazing set-ups that I see on Instagram. The list of toys and resources you could buy to re-create them are endless. However most people's storage spaces and bank accounts are not! So I hope that this list, and indeed the whole of my Resources for Play series, will help you prioritise a few key resources that can be used in multiple set-ups and activities. It's worth remembering too that children need very little in order to engage in small world play- a little imagination goes a long way! The ultimate goal is to equip our children to play independently, so many of my recommended resources are chosen with creative, self-directed play in mind. Buy Small World Toys (Amazon US) Buy Small World Toys (Amazon UK) 1. Animals Our collection of animals and dinosaurs get used most days. They are the perfect accompaniment to open-ended play and encourage all sorts of small world play scenarios. We use them a lot in small world set ups but they are also used equally in self-directed play. I always recommend Schleich animals as I find them the best quality and most realistic-looking. I've tried many other cheaper brands over the years but none of them have matched up to Schleich. We've built up our collection over time and I always keep an eye on Amazon for good deals! Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now As well as our larger Schleich animals I also find it useful to have a selection of smaller minibeasts and sea creatures for small world and sensory play. Safari and Wild Republic are two brands that make some great sets that I would recommend. Safari also have a range of miniature figures in their 'toobs' collection, which cover a whole array of interests and topics. We have a few of their sets- the space toob is one of our favourite. 2. Peg People It's difficult to find good quality people figures for small world play so I prefer to use peg people most of the time. You can buy plain wooden peg people really cheaply online and paint them yourself. On the whole I tend to keep my peg people simple so that to a child they can be anything (firefighter, nurse, astronaut etc...). I painted these in rainbow colours using acrylic paint and they've lasted really well. Buy Peg People (Amazon UK) Buy Peg People (Amazon US) If you're feeling up for more of a challenge you could try painting more details on like I did for these Frozen peg dolls. Again I painted these using acrylic paints and then acrylic paint pens for the detail. If DIY isn't for you there are a couple of wooden toy brands who do great sets of peg people, like these ones. 3. Artificial Grass There's something about artificial grass that just brings small world play to life! We have a large piece rolled up under our sofa and a smaller piece that I cut up to fit into one our circular trays. It's great to use with train-track, building blocks or for farmyard play. If you think you would find it difficult to store a roll of this some green play scarfs make a brilliant base for small worlds and fold up really small. You can also use blue ones for water. 4. Roads & Railway Track Road or rail tape is great to have to hand when setting up small worlds. It's relatively inexpensive and also great to take away if you're travelling. Another option is to invest in some Way To Play rubber roads. These are brilliant for larger set ups and for using with sand and other sensory play. We also find our railway track gets incorporated into a lot of small world play. 5. Vehicles It's always useful to have a stash of vehicles for small world play. Below I have included links to some of our favourite sets. 6. Glass pebbles I find myself using these glass pebbles in lots of small world set ups. They come in a range of colours but the blues & clear set I find most useful. We use ours as sea, rivers or in some icy/ snowy set ups. I also get a lot of use out of them as a loose part for number and pattern activities. These glass pebbles need to be used with supervision as they could be a choking hazard. 7. Trees & Greenery There are so many options for trees in small world play. We have several sisal trees that come with a wooden base. They look fairly realistic and we use them a lot. Other options include buying a set of DIY wooden trees that you can either paint yourself or leave natural. If you have a bigger budget there are also some gorgeous wooden tree sets by the brands Blacks Toys and Reduga Grez 8. Log Slices This is another simple resource that I find myself using again and again. I bought these log slices in two sizes- 5-6cm and 11-12cm. 9. Shells & Pebbles Shells and pebbles are so useful for beach, river and pond small worlds. Our pebbles get used for lots of other set-ups too. Most of them I've collected ourselves but we don't get particularly exotic sea-shells locally so I've supplemented our collection with an excellent pack from Amazon. 10. Building Blocks A good set of building blocks are just so useful for open-ended small world play. We made our own set of pyramid building blocks. You can read about it on this post. I also find our DIY wooden houses get a lot of love. You can find the tutorial here. Organising Our Small World Resources There are some small world resources that my kids have access to all the time, others that are rotated into our play space and a selection of resources that I usually hold back for small world play that I set-up. Animals, peg people, a few vehicles and building blocks are all kept out permanently. They are used most days, one way or another, and are key to so much of my girls' imaginative play. There are other small world toys that we rotate in and out of our play space such as the train track, tree house and doll's house, depending on their current interests. The log slices, shells, pebbles and other natural materials are usually kept stored in my small world resources box and brought out for specific set-ups. They occasionally get rotated onto the play shelves to use in their own small world play set-ups, but this hasn't been possible recently because many of them aren't appropriate for my almost-2 year old to play with without direct supervision. If you'd like to learn more about setting up a playroom or play space check out this article from Porch.com: Expert Advice to Design the Ultimate Kids Playroom at Home I hope you've found this post useful! If you have, please do pin it for later reference. To be the first to hear of the next post in our Resources for Play series you can subscribe to our blog updates on this page.
