Quality, safety and maintenance of spaces p20 – Children experience high quality spaces
Our physical environment, whether offered indoors or outdoors, is welcoming, fully meets children’s needs, and is well equipped…. We make the best use of available resources to create, sustain and enhance a motivating physical environment.
Whilst we prioritise children’s safety, we embrace a positive, balanced approach to risk in children’s play. Children engage in a broad range of challenging and interesting play opportunities that support and extend their development and learning. Through these experiences children build self-confidence. They learn to assess and manage risks for themselves, developing essential skills and resilience.
p25
To what extent does the physical environment support different types of play?
How can we be confident that our physical environment maximises opportunities for children to be challenged, creative and engaged in their play?
How well are children enabled to select and make use of high-quality resources which meet their needs, interests and development?
Playing, learning and developing p27 – Children’s engagement
Children make informed choices about their play and learning within a creative, challenging and enabling environment….. We are skilled at using high-quality interactions, spaces and experiences to extend and sustain children’s interests.
Playing, learning and developing p28 – Quality interactions
Our children have frequent, appropriate opportunities to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills through imaginative play and storytelling. This helps children to extend their own thinking, practise new skills and consolidate their learning in ways which are meaningful to them.
p31
How do we maximise opportunities for children to be challenged, creative and engaged in their play and learning?
How well do we support and encourage children’s natural curiosity, creativity and problem solving?
Learning, Teaching and Assessment p39 – Children’s learning and engagement
Our children are motivated and sustain engagement as they interact purposefully with a rich range of challenging and open-ended opportunities across the curriculum. We are highly effective in using the environment to support children’s learning. Children explore, experiment, and develop curiosity and creativity through a wide range of high-quality resources and spaces.
My Movement and co-ordination development
p28 Experiences
Access to resources that encourage open-ended experimentation helps develop my fine and gross motor skills. For example, loose parts play can involve large blocks I need to physically manipulate or small parts I need to carefully select and place on an artwork I am creating.
Promoting my confidence, creativity and curiosity
p30 Interactions
Help model techniques and strategies with me to encourage this new learning in my new challenges or suggest a new context through introducing a provocation.
Pose questions which encourage my inquiry, such as, I wonder why you think that, to extend my emerging ability to verbalise my thoughts and actions.
Say I wonder what happens if… to help me make sense of what happens when I try things out.
p31
Experiences
Create a wealth of interesting situations for me both outdoors and in. Carefully consider the possibilities of the objects available to me each day. How do they provoke my interest and extend my thoughts and learning?
Spaces
Carefully consider the resources on offer to me and how they will provoke my senses and encourage my curiosity and creativity.
p107
Challenge questions
How often do you provide opportunities which specifically promote children’s curiosity and problem solving skills?
Reflective Questions:
Are the children having and following their own ideas? Are they choosing and exploring their own ways of doing things?
Are the children willing to have a go and take risks in their block play? Do they keep trying if things don’t work?
Are the children involved? Are they concentrating on what they want to achieve?
Are the children enjoying their play and discoveries? Do they enjoy achieving what they set out to do? By scaffolding ideas using open-ended questions or making ‘I wonder’ and ‘I notice’ comments to children, block play becomes an exciting environment in which practitioners can develop a deeper understanding of a child’s world.
