Planning for the Early Years: The Local Community: How to plan learning opportunities that engage and interest children
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Planning for the Early Years - Jennie Lindon
Title page
Planning for the Early Years: The Local Community
How to plan learning opportunities that engage and interest children
By Jennie Lindon
Copyright page
Originally published by Practical Pre-School Books, A Division of MA Education Ltd, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, Herne Hill, London, SE24 0PB.
Tel: 020 7738 5454
www.practicalpreschoolbooks.com
© MA Education Ltd 2012
2013 digital edition by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Series design: Alison Cutler fonthillcreative 01722 717043
Series editor: Jennie Lindon
All images © MA Education Ltd. All photos taken by Lucie Carlier.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Author’s acknowledgements:
My warm thanks and appreciation to these settings, who made me so welcome during visits: Crescent I and II Kindergartens (Tooting, South London); Little Learners Nursery School (Skegness); Kennet Day Nursery (Reading); Mary Paterson Nursery School (Queens Park, London); Red Hen Day Nursery (Legbourne) and Southlands Kindergarten and Crèche (Newcastle-under-Lyme). These nurseries are located in very different areas - city, town, coast and rural - and they all use local opportunities to the full. The photos were taken in Mary Paterson Nursery School and Crescent I and II Kindergartens. Thanks also to the team at Tooting Fire Station for their warm welcome. I have waited my entire career to visit a fire station!
Planning to make a difference for children
A child-friendly approach to planning
Young children benefit from reflective adults who plan ahead on the basis of knowing those children: their current interests and abilities, but also what they are keen to puzzle out and learn. Each title in this series of Planning for the Early Years offers a specific focus for children’s learning, with activities for you to fine-tune for young girls and boys whom you know well. These adult-initiated activities happen within a day or session when children have plenty of time for initiating and organising their own play. Your focus for the activities is short term; plan ahead just enough so that everything is poised to go.
Thoughtful planning ensures that children enjoy a variety of interesting experiences that will stretch their physical skills, social and communicative abilities, and their knowledge of their own world. A flair for creative expression should be nurtured in early childhood. The national frameworks recognise that creativity is about encouraging open-ended thinking and problem-solving, just as much as opportunities for children to enjoy making something tangible. Plans that make a difference for young children connect closely with their current ability and understanding, yet offer a comfortable stretch beyond what is currently easy.
Adult-initiated activities build on children’s current interests. However, they are also planned because familiar adults have good reasons to expect that this experience will engage the children. Young children cannot ask to do something again, or develop their own version, until they have that first-time experience. The best plans are flexible; there is scope for the children to influence the details and adults can respond to what actually happens.
Planning is a process that involves thinking, discussing, doing and reflecting. Young children become part of this process, showing you their interests and preferences by their actions just as much as their words, when spoken language develops. Adult planning energy will have created an accessible, well-resourced learning environment - indoors and outdoors. The suggested activities in this book happen against that backdrop and children’s new interests can be met by enhancements to the environment - changes that they can help to organise.
Why explore the local community with young children
The wider world is an intriguing and initially unknown experience for babies and young children. They develop their knowledge and understanding of the world from direct first-hand experiences of their immediate neighbourhood. Over time, young children learn that everyone does not live in the same kind of local community that has become familiar to them. However, any differences, from minor to significant, only make sense on the basis of what has become thoroughly familiar to these young girls and boys.
A considerable amount of what very young children can learn over early childhood makes sense with a firm foundation of local knowledge. For example, the changing seasons are normal weather for the UK. These times of the year are better understood when children are enabled to connect directly with the appearance of the first spring flowers in the local park, as well as opportunities in your garden. Conkers and fallen dried leaves can have many uses: for collections, for display and for creative enterprises. They are best gathered by children themselves from local sources. They make their own choice from the array and realise, perhaps, that this year the conkers are neither very big nor shiny, and wonder why.
It is important to reflect on what happens for young children’s learning, if they are not given generous opportunities to become familiar with their local community. How can they become confident independent local travellers later in childhood, if they have had very limited experience of moving around within their own neighbourhood? Young children can be guided during early childhood about taking good care of themselves: the start of a long learning journey about road safety or how to behave wisely on the riverbank.
Thoughtful adults: effective planning
The settings, whose excellent practice helped to inform this book, had leaders and teams who were committed to the value of local outings. They took