Ranges

Making relationships

• Enjoys the company of others and seeks contact with others from birth
• Shows their readiness to be social through using their sensory abilities; following movement and gazing at faces intently
• Moves body, arms and legs and changes facial expression in response to others, e.g. sticking out tongue, opening mouth and widening eyes
• Responds to what carer is paying attention to, e.g. following their gaze
• Distinguishes between people, recognising the look, sound and smell of their close carer
• They will usually calm, smile or reduce crying when they hear their carers’/parent’s voice, or smell their clothing, for example
• Holds up arms to be picked up and cuddled and is soothed by physical touch such as being held, cuddled and stroked 
• Begins to display attachment behaviours such as wanting to stay near their close carer and becoming upset when left with an unfamiliar person
• Becomes wary of unfamiliar people or people they haven’t seen for a while

Sense of self

• Learns about their physical self through exploratory play with their hands and feet and movement
• Is becoming aware of self as they imitate sounds and expressions that are mirrored back to them by close adults: Laughing and gurgling during physical interactions
• Shows awareness of being a separate individual through initiating contact with others using voice, gesture, eye contact and facial expression and through secure-base behaviours
• Expresses awareness of their physical self through their own movements, gestures and expressions and by touching their own and other’s faces, eyes, and mouth in play and care events
• Shows growing confidence that their needs will be met by freely expressing their need for comfort, nourishment or company

Understanding emotions

• Communicates a range of emotions (e.g. pleasure, interest, fear, surprise, anger and excitement) through making sounds, facial expressions, and moving their bodies
• Expresses feelings strongly through crying in order to make sure that their needs will be met
• May whimper, scream and cry if hurt or neglected. If their needs are not responded to, they may become withdrawn and passive
• Seeks physical and emotional comfort by snuggling in to trusted adults
• Is affirmed and comforted by familiar carers through voice, physical presence and touch, for example singing, cuddles, smiles or rocking
• Reacts emotionally to other people’s emotions; smiling when smiled at and becoming distressed if they hear another child crying or see a blank unresponsive face

Listening and attention

• Turns toward a familiar sound then locates range of sounds with accuracy
• Listens to, distinguishes and responds to intonations and sounds of voices
• Reacts in interaction with others by smiling, looking and moving
• Quietens or alerts to the sound of speech
• Looks intently at a person talking, but stops responding if speaker turns away
• Listens to familiar sounds, words, or finger plays
• Fleeting Attention – not under child’s control, new stimuli takes whole attention

Understanding

• Turns when hears own name
• Starts to understand contextual clues, e.g. familiar gestures, words and sounds

Speaking

• Communicates needs and feelings in a variety of ways including crying, gurgling, babbling and squealing
• Makes own sounds in response when talked to by familiar adults
• Lifts arms in anticipation of being picked up
• Practises and gradually develops speech sounds (babbling) to communicate with adults; says sounds like baba, nono, gogo
• Points and looks to make requests and to share an interest

Moving and handling

• Gradually develops ability to hold up own head
• Makes movements with arms and legs which gradually become more controlled - moves hands together/legs together
• Follows and tracks a sound or moving object, moving head and eyes
• When lying on back, plays with hands and grasps feet, alternating mouthing hands/feet with focusing gaze on them, and vocalising
• Reaches out for, touches and begins to hold objects, developing later on into being able to release grasp
• Rolls over from back to side, gradually spending longer on side waving upper leg before returning to back
• Develops roll from back right through to front, gradually becoming happy to spend longer on tummy as able to lift head for longer
• Explores objects with mouth, often picking up an object and holding it to the mouth for lips and tongue to explore (mouthing)
• When lying on tummy becomes able to lift first head and then chest, supporting self with forearms and then straight arms
• Starts to creep (belly crawl commando-style) from prone (on tummy) position on the floor, often moving backwards before going forwards
• Becomes increasingly able to communicate, both expressing and responding through body movements, gesture, facial expression and vocalisations

Health and self-care

• Responds to and thrives on warm, sensitive physical contact and care
• Makes needs known through crying and body movements
• Responds to being rocked as a means of soothing
• Sleeps for 14-16 hours a day, with several short naps. Substantial sleeping is vital for processing sensory information taken in while awake
• Responds and turns to sounds, especially voices
• Expresses discomfort, hunger or thirst, distress and need for holding or moving
• Alert for periods of increasing length, interspersed with naps
• Anticipates food routines with interest
• Starts to move to solid feeding (current recommendations are at around 6 months) as well as milk
• Communicates discomfort or distress with wet or soiled nappy
• First teeth usually appear – first two lower incisors and then two upper incisors
• Chews on baby toothbrush
• Opens mouth for spoon

Reading

• Notices and engages with sounds and images in the environment
• As part of sensory exploration, may touch and handle books and digital reading devices
• Enjoys looking at books and other suitable printed or digital material with familiar people, and being read to

Writing

Writing systems are complicated ways to symbolise meaning, and children need to learn many skills and develop a lot of knowledge as they begin to write.  Writing skills and understanding start to develop in babies and toddlers.   Firstly, children begin to understand that written texts are symbolic and carry meaning. Later they begin to produce and read written marks purposefully (See the roots of Writing in Communication and language).

What is often referred to as ‘early mark-making’ is  the beginning of writing.  It is a sensory and physical, and cognitive experience for babies and toddlers, which enables them to see the connection between their actions and the resulting marks, recognising their own agency. (See roots of mark-making and handwriting in Playing and exploring and Physical Development).

Number

• Reacts to obvious changes of amount when those amounts are significant (more than double)

Spatial awareness

• Explores space when they are free to move, roll and stretch
• Developing an awareness of their own bodies, that their body has different parts and where these are in relation to each other

Shape

• Explores differently sized and shaped objects
• Beginning to put objects inside others and take them out again

Pattern

• Shows interest in patterned songs, rhymes and movements
• Experiences patterned objects and images
• Begins to predict what happens next in predictable situations

Measures

• Responds to size, reacting to very big or very small items that they see or try to pick up

People and communities

• Starts to realise they influence people, e.g. as they laugh and smile so do the people they are with
• Develops a sense of belonging to their family and their key carer
• Recognises key people in their own lives

The world

• Moves eyes, then head, to follow moving objects
• Reacts with abrupt change when a face or object suddenly disappears from view
• Looks around with interest when in a room, garden, balcony or park, visually scanning the environment for novel, interesting objects and events
• Smiles with pleasure at recognisable playthings
• Repeats actions that have an effect, e.g. kicking or hitting a mobile or shaking a rattle

Technology

The beginnings of understanding technology lie in babies exploring and making sense of objects and how they behave (see Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically)

Creating with materials

• Experiments with a range of media –  tools, materials, sound and whole body movement -- through multi-sensory exploration

Being imaginative and expressive

• Responds to and engages with the world that surrounds her, e.g. sounds, movement, people, objects, sensations, emotions (her own and others

Making relationships

• Offer warm, loving and consistent care in your interactions with babies and young children, making good eye contact and handling children gently and respectfully.
• Respond sensitively and quickly to babies and young children’s needs, holding and comforting each child as they need
• Learn from parents regarding caring practices at home so you can establish predictable and familiar patterns within your own interactions allowing the child to feel safe with you.
• Tune in to the meaning of babies and young children’s communications of crying, babbling, pointing or pulling and respond with interest, watching and understanding the cues they offer so they feel acknowledged and known by you
• Notice and respect babies’ and young children’s signals that they no longer want to play or engage; pause and be quiet when they turn away.
• Spend plenty of time with your key children playing interactive games, finger plays and singing familiar songs that engage you both in mirroring movement and sounds, follow the child’s lead.
• Take primary responsibility for your key children’s physical care whenever you are both are present.
• Use care events to build a close relationship with babies and young children through respectful interactions and taking it slowly. Always explain what is going to happen and invite their participation.
• Be physically and emotionally available to babies and young children to provide a secure base for them to feel secure and supported in their play and independent explorations
• Accept babies’ and young children’s need for security, allowing them to stay close by when feeling insecure or anxious. Caregivers may have to focus on regaining the baby or young child’s trust by remaining available to them constantly until they feel secure again.
• Get to know each baby’s and young child’s separation rituals and support them by being available when they are separating from and reuniting with their parents/carers
• Let your key children know where you are going, what you are doing and who they will be with, when leaving the group during the day or planning leave. 
• Support babies and young children’s need to hold on to their special comfort object while playing or getting changed.
• Key persons should adopt a process of inviting, suggesting and then engaging with a child in interactions and care events to enable a cooperative relationship to develop

Sense of self

• Engage in attentive, uninterrupted play with babies when they are alert and ready.
• Provide many opportunities for babies to explore how their bodies move by giving them free play time on the firm surface of the floor.
• To support their sense of agency and autonomy, only put babies into positions that they can get into and out of themselves. For example, do not put them on their tummies until they can roll over independently.
• Listen, respond to and build on babies’ expressions, actions, and gestures, engaging in conversation with them. 
• Play interactive games that help babies recognise themselves, such as finger plays and action rhymes.
• Spend one-to-one time playing, talking and looking at books that are of personal relevance together.
• Talk with babies about people and things that are special to them, such as their family members or pets.
• Offer commentary to babies about what is happening around them and what they are doing.
• Notice and acknowledge babies’ independently chosen activities and tasks, valuing their efforts as well as celebrating their achievements.
• Use care events to support a positive sense of self through respectful interactions.
• Support a baby’s confidence by being close by as they explore.
• Offer manageable choice between two things, e.g. Would you like the blue t-shirt or the one with spots on?
• Use familiar greetings, in relevant languages, with children, parents and each other.
• Learn from parents the baby’s usual experience of feeding, changing, sleeping and comforting before taking on these tasks yourself.
• Ensure a baby feels safe and secure whilst preparing their food, preparing to change their nappy or to go out for a walk by talking to them and providing suitable toys and/or comforters for them while they wait.

Understanding emotions

• Learn from parents about how their baby expresses their emotions and what they do to soothe them
• Support babies who are distressed on separating from their parents by acknowledging their feelings and reassuring them.
• Be responsive to all communication such as crying, babbling and physical movements to acknowledge a baby’s emotional expressions.
• Be emotionally and physically available, providing a secure presence and a refuge at times when a baby may be feeling anxious.
• “Tune in” to a baby’s emotions and respond calmly, gently and sensitively in a way that follows their needs
• Use calming processes such as rocking or calmly singing in response to emotional expression and note what helps to sooth and support the baby
• Learn lullabies and other songs that babies know from home and sing them to the babies for comfort.
• Make sure that babies, toddlers and young children have access to their comfort object whenever they need it.
• Show babies they are safe and loved by comforting them when experiencing frustration and anxiety. 
• Share in babies’ happy and joyful experiences, joining in with their excitement without overwhelming them with your responses.
• Be consistent in your responses so that babies gradually become aware of reasonable boundaries
• Support babies and young children in their play with others modelling caring and respectful behaviours and affirming their pro-social behaviours.
• Be alert to unexplained changes in behaviour or unusual injuries a child has and take action within safeguarding guidelines.

Listening and attention

• Get physically close making sure the baby can see your face. Make sure the baby is looking at you and wants to interact. This will help the baby to observe faces and notice communications.
• Show that you are present and tuned in by using eye contact and touch to create shared moments of interaction.
• Be attentive and leave space for the baby to start a “serve and return” conversation.
• Use a range of animated facial expressions to show babies you are interested in them.
• Use a lively voice with ups and downs to help babies tune in.
• Say the baby’s name to draw their attention.
• Imitate the baby’s responses to show you notice and value their contributions. 
• Encourage playfulness, laughter, turn-taking and responses, using “peek-a-boo” and action rhymes.
• Sing songs and rhymes during everyday routines.
• Use repeated sounds, and words and phrases so babies can begin to recognise particular sounds.
• Pay attention to babies’ teasing and emergence of humour.  They may use inanimate objects to tease and provoke your reaction.
• Follow the baby’s focus and pay joint attention to what they are interested in.

Understanding

• Look at the baby and say their name.  Make eye contact and wait for them to react.
• Interpret and give meaning to the things young babies show interest in, e.g. when babies point to an object tell them what it is.
• Use an animated, enthusiastic face when interacting with children.
• Observe children as they watch their environment.
• Look out for strategies babies use to attract your attention, such as seeking eye contact, gestures such as pointing, facial expressions and intentional physical movement.
• Talk to babies about what you are doing and what is happening, so they will link words with actions, e.g. preparing lunch.
• Use actions including hands and finger plays to support your words, e.g. waving when you say bye bye.
• Speak clearly.  Babies respond well to a higher pitched, sing-song voice.
• Use and repeat single words while you share attention to an object or event, so the baby can gradually link the word to its meaning.

Speaking

• Find out from parents how they like to communicate with their baby, noting especially the chosen language.
• Ensure parents understand the importance of talking with babies in their home language.
• Pay attention to babies’ communications including facial expression, gesture, etc., and respond promptly so they know they have been heard.
• Encourage babies’ sounds and babbling by copying their sounds in a turn-taking or “serve and return” interaction.
• Communicate with parents to exchange and update information about babies’ personal words.
• Find out from parents how their baby attracts their attention at home.  For example, calling or banging from highchair, verbalising if left alone, seeking eye gaze.
• Recognise the importance of all sounds and babbling babies share – this is their way of sharing their voice with you.

Moving and handling

• Ensure that from birth onwards babies have frequent opportunities for moving and being active throughout the time that they are awake.
• Take babies outdoors as much as possible, paying attention to their responses to sensory stimulations such as smells, changing light and moving air.
• Give babies lots of time being touched and held, moving around the environment as well as being still with them.
• Very young babies may enjoy resting on your shoulder or lying on your front looking into your face. 
• Before babies are able to roll themselves onto their tummy, put them onto their back for floor time and allow rolling to slowly develop.
• Share with parent/carers the developmental value of ample time spent on the tummy and the ways this can be supported to gradually develop, so that it is always pleasurable for the baby.
• Help babies to become aware of their own bodies through touch and movement.
• Whilst ensuring that babies are warm enough, give them plenty of floor time with non-restricting clothing and bare feet.
• Make the most of each stage in development and support the baby to get all of its developmental benefits: for example, time on the side is an important step in neurological development and needs lots of practice.
• Talk and sing to babies while they are on the floor or ground: they will benefit more from action around them in the room and garden than from a baby gym.
• Tune into how individual babies communicate through movement and body language.
• Play games, such as offering a small toy and taking it again to rattle, or sail through the air.
• Encourage young babies in their efforts to gradually share control of the bottle with you.

Health and self-care

• Be alert and responsive to when babies have moved out of exploratory mode and enjoying floor play to needing holding, cuddling or meeting care needs.
• Talk to young babies as you stroke their cheeks, or pat their backs, reminding them that you are there and they are safe.
• Discuss with parents the critical role of sleep in infancy and refer to Health Visitor or NHS guidance on daytime sleeping in infancy.
• Find out from parents about the feeding patterns of young babies.
• Encourage babies gradually to share control of food and drink, remaining tuned-in and available throughout feeding.
• Give bodily care times prominence in your role with babies, making feeding, nappy changing, bathing and dressing times slow and attentive.
• Notice individual baby cues when spending special one-to-one time with them to ensure they are ready to engage.
• Discuss the cultural needs and expectations for skin and hair care with parents prior to entry to the setting, ensuring that the needs of all children are met appropriately and that parents’ wishes are respected.
• Be aware of specific health difficulties among the babies in the group.
• Share with parents the value of tummy time for developing awareness for later continence and appetite control.
• Look after baby teeth as soon as they begin to appear.

Reading

• Use finger play, rhymes and familiar songs to support young babies’ enjoyment.
• Provide enjoyable shared experiences with books and apps in ways that are emotionally secure and supportive.
• Plan shared story and book time as a key source of nurture and attachment which will continue throughout the EYFS and beyond

Writing

• Encourage children to use their fingers and implements to explore and trace marks on a surface, e.g. using a spoon in their food, or a finger in the sand.
• Make marks together with babies and toddlers using a range of appropriate materials and tools.

Number

• Notice and mirror children’s reactions to changes in amount.
• Add to objects & draw attention to the change in amount, using words like more.
• When feeding babies comment on whether they would like more after being winded, e.g. Oh, you want more.
• Use feeding, changing and bathing times for finger-play with young babies

Spatial awareness

• Support babies’ developing awareness of their own bodies e.g. through baby massage and singing songs
• During floor play sometimes place objects that are just in or just out of reach, including small objects on cloths that babies can pull towards themselves.

Shape

• Encourage babies’ explorations of the characteristics of objects, e.g. by rolling a ball or sliding a block.
• Demonstrate putting items inside others of similar shape

Pattern

• Sing patterned songs and rhymes with predictable movements or actions (including from children’s families).
• Move with babies to the rhythm patterns in familiar songs, Encourage older babies to join in tapping and clapping along to simple rhythms.
• Use repeated noises, movements and activities.
• Play simple “to and fro” games, passing and rolling between the adult and child so they begin to predict which comes next.

Measures

• Comment on the size and weight of objects when babies grasp things that are big or heavy.
• During water play and bathing routines, show filling and emptying containers.
• At the end of mealtimes show and comment on the empty bowl, cup or bottle: All gone!

People and communities

See Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language

The world

• Encourage young babies’ movements through your interactions, e.g. touching their fingers and toes and showing delight at their kicking and waving.

 See also Characteristics of Effective Learning – Playing and Exploring, and Physical Development

Technology

See Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically

Creating with materials

• Attend to how babies and children are using their whole body in sensing, exploring and experimenting with space, texture, sounds, rhythms, materials, and tools.
• Welcome the ways in which babies and children arrange, combine, transform, group, and sequence materials that both natural and manmade.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Notice the ways in which babies react to other babies and adults and the world that surrounds them.
• Tune into and sensitively respond to babies’ and children’s expressive and communicative actions.

Making relationships

• The setting offers a welcoming, calm, caring environment that is inviting and will make babies feel they want to come and play.  
• Implement a Key Person Approach, so that each child and their family have a special person to relate to and rely on.
• Continuing professional development and supervision to support attachment relationships between key persons and children in the setting.
• Develop close partnerships with parents/carers, learning from their knowledge and expertise about their baby
• Admissions are phased so that only one new child starts at a time to allow them to settle in gradually.
• Ensure the Key Person Approach underpins all provision for babies including personal care events, play and daily interactions with parents/carers.
• Arrange for staff absence to be covered by practitioners who are already familiar to the children.
• Allocate a secondary key person who takes responsibility for the care of babies when their key person is absent.
• The number of changes children make between groups and key person is reduced to as few as possible during their time in the setting.

• Organise working patterns and activities to allow the key person or secondary key person to be available to support babies and toddlers and their parents separating and reuniting at the beginning and end of the day.
• The day is predictable enough to give babies a sense of security but is flexible enough to respond to individual children’s patterns.
• Offer continuity and consistency for babies by the key person undertaking all their key children’s care needs; moving through each part of the bathroom, lunch and sleep routine together, rather than children moving from one adult to the next.
• The environment is designed so that the number of times the key person has to leave the room is limited. It helps for example, if the bathroom and feed preparation areas are en-suite.
• Group rooms are as home-like as possible and are decorated with photographs of the children’s families and other significant people, animals and places.
• There are low adult chairs that support practitioners when they are bottle-feeding babies and which also allow children to climb up onto their laps.
• Develop play opportunities centred on objects babies bring from home, as these help them to make transitions and experience continuity.
• Plan to have one-to-one time to interact with young babies when they are in an alert and responsive state and willing to engage.
• Create opportunities to sing to and with babies and young children.

Sense of self

• Allow for flexibility within practice so that the routines you follow offer continuity between home and setting.
• Learn from parents/carers about each baby’s family culture, traditions and languages.
• Share knowledge about each child’s language(s) by making a poster or book of greetings and key phrases to use
• Provide comfortable areas where parents, practitioners and young babies can be together.
• Create time at the beginning and end of each day to talk and reflect with parents about their baby’s daily needs, progress and development, with communication support for different language speakers and users.
• If appropriate, plan to have times when babies and older siblings or friends can be together.
• Place mirrors where babies can see their own reflection. Talk with them about what they see.
• Create sufficient safe space for babies to move, roll, stretch and explore.
• Provide objects and images that reflect the baby and their home.
• Provide types of food and styles of serving and eating that are familiar to each child.
• Display photos of family and other special people.
• Provide toys and open- ended play experiences that match the play interests and styles of individual babies.
• Provide play resources that reflect each baby’s home culture and that help them to make links with the smells and sounds of home.

Understanding emotions

• Observe babies’ emotional responses and plan the routines, the environment and play experiences to support them.
• Encourage parents to bring their baby’s comforter/transitional object to ease the change from home to setting.
• Create a cosy, quiet place for babies to be calm.
• Provide comfortable seating such as a sofa or cushions for baby and key person to be together.
• Create spaces and experiences in which babies feel secure enough to explore and play.
• Provide resources including picture books and stories that focus on a range of emotions.
• Store babies’ toys and comforters where they can find and reach them.
• Communicate with parents/carers daily to ensure continuity of care between home and setting.
• Communicate with sensitivity when interacting with parents who do not speak or understand English and draw on the language skills available where possible.
• Develop close partnerships with parents to discuss and agree boundaries of behaviour
• Maintain an awareness and understanding that children who have had adverse experiences may require additional all-round support.
• Ensure practitioners have regular opportunities to reflect on their emotional responses to the children and to their work as well as thinking about the children’s progress and planning play experiences.

Listening and attention

• Share stories, songs and rhymes from all cultures and in babies’ home languages and other languages common in communities.
• Share favourite stories, songs, rhymes or music as babies are settling to sleep, or at other quiet times.
• Sing frequently with young babies, encouraging them to join in.
• Create an environment which invites responses from babies and adults, for example, touching, smiling, smelling, feeling, listening, exploring, describing and sharing.
• Establish a familiar pattern by spending prolonged moments of time each day interacting with the baby, or a small group of babies.
• Consider what it feels like to use your voice in your environment – what kinds of soundscape and sensory atmosphere do children experience? Is the invitation to “join in” with this environment, using voices, bodies and objects to make noise, irresistible?

Understanding

• Let babies see and hear the sequence of actions you go through as you carry out familiar routines.
• Provide resources and spaces  that stimulate babies’ interests such as a shiny bell, a book or a mirror on the floor or on your lap.
• Find out from parents how babies make themselves understood at home.
• Confirm which is their home language.
• Display lists of words from different home languages, and invite parents and other adults to contribute. Include all languages in the community since seeing their languages reflected in the setting will encourage all parents to feel involved and valued.
• When singing rhymes and songs use actions to support children’s understanding of words and their relation to wider life.

Speaking

• Learn and use key words in the home languages of babies in the setting.
• Value and learn from families about their communities, languages and cultures.  Including influences from other contexts of the baby’s life supports wellbeing.
• Encourage parents to record familiar, comforting sounds, such as lullabies in home languages. Use these to help babies settle if they are tired or distressed.

Moving and handling

• The caregiver’s body is the first and foremost enabling environment, and babies need lots of time in contact with attentive and responsive adults.
• From birth onwards, babies need to experience movement in space through being held.  Rocking, side-to-side and up-and-down movements are soothing, enjoyable and very developmentally beneficial.
• Provide comfortable seating both indoors and outdoors, so that adults can spend time with babies lying on their laps and upper body.  Rocking chairs are especially useful.
• Make the most of the outdoors for providing the tactile and visual stimulation that babies need in their first year.
• Limit the time young babies spend in seats and other “containers” as this prevents physical development through movement and touch.
• Provide a safe space on a warm firm surface, such as blanket on the floor or grass, so that young babies can lie on their backs to move, kick, stretch, find their hands and feet and look into the distance.
• Give plenty of time for babies to discover and play with their hands and feet before offering them things to hold. 
• Gradually encourage babies to explore the space near them by putting interesting things beside them so they can reach, stretch, turn and roll towards them.
• Have well-planned areas that allow babies maximum space to move, roll, stretch and explore in safety indoors and outdoors.
• When babies begin to be able to move on their belly, provide a safe smooth and firm surface, such as a wooden floor or carpet.
• Provide objects to be sucked, pulled, squeezed and held, to encourage sensory development along with hand use.

Health and self-care

• Provide a dedicated place for daytime sleeping outdoors as well as indoors to suit the needs of individual babies.
• Enable and allow babies to sleep when they need to and to wake up from naps naturally.
• Provide ample seating both indoors and outside so that adults can sit comfortably with distressed, resting and alert babies.  Swing seats outdoors work especially well.
• Keep the environment quiet and calm, so that babies can attend to the voices and natural sounds around them.
• Plan to 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.
• Plan for feeding times to be slow and pleasurable.  A gentle rhythm to feeding times allows babies to anticipate what is coming next and feel relaxed.
• Make the nappy changing and dressing area pleasant to be in for both babies and adults, so that changing becomes a time for one-to-one relationship building.
• Trained staff can introduce baby massage sessions that make young babies feel nurtured and promote a sense of wellbeing.  Involving parents helps them to use this approach at home.

Reading

• Provide mobiles, inviting displays and pictures of familiar characters in the environment, including in physical care areas, to prompt babies’ focused gaze, pointing and shared attention.
• Collect a diverse range of board books, cloth books, picture books and stories to share with young babies.
• Offer books that provide sensory experiences.
• Include babies in telephone and video calls with family and close friends.

Writing

• Provide a range of materials: sand, paint, early writing apps etc. for babies and toddlers to make marks with their hands and fingers, feet and bodies.
• Give children large sheets of paper, trays of gloop, paint, soil etc. to make marks collaboratively.

Number

• Provide small groups of the same objects in treasure baskets, as well as single items.

Spatial awareness

• Provide opportunities for babies to move freely on carpets, grass etc. Observe and sensitively support babies’ play and give them long stretches of uninterrupted time to explore.
• Provide low mirrors to support babies to develop a body awareness.

Shape

• Provide interestingly shaped objects to explore.
• Make towers for children to knock down using objects that stack.

Pattern

• Plan for adults to have time to enjoy repetitive activities with babies.
• Provide resources with high-contrast patterns.

Measures

• Provide a range of objects of various sizes and weights in treasure baskets to excite and encourage babies’ interests including larger and smaller items.

People and communities

See Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language

• Provide opportunities, both indoors and out, for babies and toddlers to see people and things beyond the baby room, including the activities of older children.

The world

• Provide a range of everyday and natural objects to explore such as in treasure baskets for sitting babies.
• Provide additional interest – make small changes in the predictable environment.
• Provide spaces that give young babies different views of their surroundings, such as a soft play area, under a tree, on a lap, looking at bushes and flowers in a garden or park.
• Ensure that babies and toddlers experience the natural world around them: the wind, the sun, the moon, the movement of the leaves in the trees and different sounds such as birdsong and insect sounds.

Technology

See Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically

Creating with materials

• Create a rich and well-ordered environment that enables babies and children to use all their senses.
• Choose and select with intention the materials and tools available to children.
• Create the time and space that will ensure that children can engage in depth with a diverse range of materials.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Create a rich environment that enables babies and children to use all their senses.
• Provide babies and children with a range of. experiences to feed their imaginative potential, e.g. stories, images, music, natural and urban experiences, social encounters (mealtimes, shopping, visitors).

Making relationships

• Draws others into social interaction through calling, crying and babbling, smiling, laughing and moving their bodies and limbs
• Shares interest and attention by looking to where the adult is looking, pointing and using their gaze to direct the adult’s attention to something
• Engages another person to help achieve a goal, e.g. to get an object out of reach
• Cooperates with caregiving experiences, such as dressing
• Builds relationships with special people
• Displays attachment behaviours such as wanting to stay near to their close carers, checking where they are and protesting when separated
• Is wary of unfamiliar people
• Explores confidently when they feel secure in the presence of a familiar adult and is more likely to engage in new or challenging situations
• Closely watches others’ body language to begin to understand their intentions and meaning
• Is fascinated by other children, watching them and interacting with them through offering toys, food etc, and by reaching for objects that another has

Sense of self

• Responds to their own name and enjoys finding own nose, eyes or tummy as part of interactive games
• Shows an interest in their reflection in a mirror, although may not yet realise that the reflection is them
• Shows separation anxiety as they become more aware of themselves as separate individuals
• Shows an emerging autonomy through asserting choices and preferences such as different tastes and rejects things they don’t want, for example by pushing them away
• Understands that their own voice and actions causes an effect on others, e.g. clapping hands starts a game
• Shows growing self-confidence through playing freely and with involvement

Understanding emotions

• Shows a wider variety of feelings, using crying, gestures and vocalisations freely to express their needs
• Begins to become aware of their emotions as the connections in the brain that make feelings conscious grow and develop
• Uses familiar adult to share feelings such as excitement and for “emotional refuelling” when feeling tired or anxious
• Uses a comfort object, familiar others, routines or spaces to soothe themselves, particularly when separated from their close carer
• Becomes more able to adapt their behaviour and increase their participation and co-operation as they become familiar with and anticipate routine
• Explores the boundaries of behaviours that are accepted by adults and become aware of basic rules as they use their emerging agency and autonomy

Listening and attention

• Moves whole body to sounds they enjoy, such as music or a regular beat
• Concentrates intently on an object or activity of own choosing for short periods
• Pays attention to dominant stimulus – easily distracted by noises or other people talking.
• Enjoys laughing and being playful with others

Understanding

• Is developing the ability to follow others’ body language, including pointing and gesture
• Responds to simple questions when in a familiar context with a special person (e.g. Where’s Mummy?, Where’s your nose?)
• Understanding of single words in context is developing, e.g. cup, milk, daddy

Speaking

• Uses sounds in play, e.g. brrrm for toy car
• Uses single words
• Frequently imitates words and sounds
• Enjoys babbling and increasingly experiments with using sounds
• Uses words to communicate for a range of purposes (e.g. teddy, more, no, bye-bye)
• Uses pointing with eye gaze, and then fingers or hands, to make requests and to share an interest
• Creates personal words as they begin to develop language

Moving and handling

• Belly crawling moves into crawling up on hands and knees
• Becomes adept at changing position from crawling to sitting in order to stop, pick up, handle and investigate objects
• Sits unsupported on the floor, leaving hands free to manipulate objects with both hands
• Picks up objects in palmar grip and shakes, waves, bangs, pulls and tugs them between two hands while looking at them
• Enjoys finger and toe rhymes and games.
• Pulls to standing from crawling, holding on to furniture or person for support
• Walks around furniture lifting one foot and stepping sideways (cruising)
• Starts walking independently on firm surfaces and later on uneven surfaces
• Points with first finger, sharing attention with adult.
• Starts to throw and release objects overarm.
• Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks in food, damp sand, water, mud, paste or paint
• Pushes, pulls, lifts and carries objects, moving them around and placing with intent
• Climbs inside, underneath, into corners and between objects
• Manipulates objects using hands singly and together, such as squeezing water out of a sponge

Health and self-care

• Sleeps for 11-15 hours a day with at least 2 naps
• Self-soothes and is able to drop off to sleep when conditions are right for them
• Expresses feelings and communicates through gesture, facial expression, movements, body language and vocalisations (such as joy, distress, frustration and fear)
• Shows rapid changes in energy levels, from highly active to a sudden need for adult support in order to restore
• Grasps finger foods and brings them to mouth and shares control of spoon and bottle or cup, moving towards independence with support
• Attentive to sounds in the environment, even at distance and overhead, often pointing, vocalising and sharing attention with adults
• Interested in making and exploring sounds with objects
• Generally has up to 12 teeth - willing to allow baby toothbrush to be used on teeth
• Can actively cooperate with nappy changing, dressing/undressing
• Starts to communicate regarding urination and bowel movement

Reading

• Handles books, printed and digital reading material with interest
• Responds to sounds in the environment such as cars, sirens and birds
• Is interested in and explores the sounds made by banging and tapping familiar objects and simple instruments
• Waves and taps arms, bounces or stamps to simple rhythms in songs and rhymes
• Notices pictures and symbols and beginning to recognise what they stand for in their familiar experiences

Writing

Writing systems are complicated ways to symbolise meaning, and children need to learn many skills and develop a lot of knowledge as they begin to write.  Writing skills and understanding start to develop in babies and toddlers.   Firstly, children begin to understand that written texts are symbolic and carry meaning. Later they begin to produce and read written marks purposefully (See the roots of Writing in Communication and language).

What is often referred to as ‘early mark-making’ is  the beginning of writing.  It is a sensory and physical, and cognitive experience for babies and toddlers, which enables them to see the connection between their actions and the resulting marks, recognising their own agency. (See roots of mark-making and handwriting in Playing and exploring and Physical Development).

Number

• May be aware of number names through their enjoyment of action rhymes and songs that relate to numbers
• Looks for things which have moved out of sight

Spatial Awareness

• Explores space around them and engages with position and direction, such as pointing to where they would like to go

Shape

• Stacks objects using flat surfaces
• Responds to changes of shape
• Attempts, sometimes successfully, to match shapes with spaces on inset puzzles

Pattern

• Joins in with repeated actions in songs and stories
• Initiates and continues repeated actions

Measures

• Shows an interest in objects of contrasting sizes in meaningful contexts
• Gets to know and enjoys daily routine
• Shows an interest in emptying containers

People and communities

• Starts to realise they influence people, e.g. as they laugh and smile so do the people they are with
• Develops a sense of belonging to their family and their key carer
• Recognises key people in their own lives

The world

• Closely observes what animals, people and vehicles do
• Watches toy being hidden and tries to find it, watches intently where a spider has scuttled away under leaves
• Looks for dropped objects
• Becomes absorbed in combining objects, e.g. banging two objects or placing objects into containers
• Knows things are used in different ways, e.g. a ball for rolling or throwing, a toy car for pushing

Technology

The beginnings of understanding technology lie in babies exploring and making sense of objects and how they behave (see Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically)

Creating with materials

• Experiments with a range of media –  tools, materials, sound and whole body movement -- through multi-sensory exploration

Being imaginative and expressive

• Responds to and engages with the world that surrounds her, e.g. sounds, movement, people, objects, sensations, emotions (her own and others

Making relationships

• Offer warm, loving and consistent care in your interactions with babies and young children, making good eye contact and handling children gently and respectfully.
• Respond sensitively and quickly to babies and young children’s needs, holding and comforting each child as they need
• Learn from parents regarding caring practices at home so you can establish predictable and familiar patterns within your own interactions allowing the child to feel safe with you.
• Tune in to the meaning of babies and young children’s communications of crying, babbling, pointing or pulling and respond with interest, watching and understanding the cues they offer so they feel acknowledged and known by you
• Notice and respect babies’ and young children’s signals that they no longer want to play or engage; pause and be quiet when they turn away.
• Spend plenty of time with your key children playing interactive games, finger plays and singing familiar songs that engage you both in mirroring movement and sounds, follow the child’s lead.
• Take primary responsibility for your key children’s physical care whenever you are both are present.
• Use care events to build a close relationship with babies and young children through respectful interactions and taking it slowly. Always explain what is going to happen and invite their participation.
• Be physically and emotionally available to babies and young children to provide a secure base for them to feel secure and supported in their play and independent explorations
• Accept babies’ and young children’s need for security, allowing them to stay close by when feeling insecure or anxious. Caregivers may have to focus on regaining the baby or young child’s trust by remaining available to them constantly until they feel secure again.
• Get to know each baby’s and young child’s separation rituals and support them by being available when they are separating from and reuniting with their parents/carers
• Let your key children know where you are going, what you are doing and who they will be with, when leaving the group during the day or planning leave. 
• Support babies and young children’s need to hold on to their special comfort object while playing or getting changed.
• Key persons should adopt a process of inviting, suggesting and then engaging with a child in interactions and care events to enable a cooperative relationship to develop

Sense of self

• Engage in attentive, uninterrupted play with babies when they are alert and ready.
• Provide many opportunities for babies to explore how their bodies move by giving them free play time on the firm surface of the floor.
• To support their sense of agency and autonomy, only put babies into positions that they can get into and out of themselves. For example, do not put them on their tummies until they can roll over independently.
• Listen, respond to and build on babies’ expressions, actions, and gestures, engaging in conversation with them. 
• Play interactive games that help babies recognise themselves, such as finger plays and action rhymes.
• Spend one-to-one time playing, talking and looking at books that are of personal relevance together.
• Talk with babies about people and things that are special to them, such as their family members or pets.
• Offer commentary to babies about what is happening around them and what they are doing.
• Notice and acknowledge babies’ independently chosen activities and tasks, valuing their efforts as well as celebrating their achievements.
• Use care events to support a positive sense of self through respectful interactions.
• Support a baby’s confidence by being close by as they explore.
• Offer manageable choice between two things, e.g. Would you like the blue t-shirt or the one with spots on?
• Use familiar greetings, in relevant languages, with children, parents and each other.
• Learn from parents the baby’s usual experience of feeding, changing, sleeping and comforting before taking on these tasks yourself.
• Ensure a baby feels safe and secure whilst preparing their food, preparing to change their nappy or to go out for a walk by talking to them and providing suitable toys and/or comforters for them while they wait.

Understanding emotions

• Learn from parents about how their baby expresses their emotions and what they do to soothe them
• Support babies who are distressed on separating from their parents by acknowledging their feelings and reassuring them.
• Be responsive to all communication such as crying, babbling and physical movements to acknowledge a baby’s emotional expressions.
• Be emotionally and physically available, providing a secure presence and a refuge at times when a baby may be feeling anxious.
• “Tune in” to a baby’s emotions and respond calmly, gently and sensitively in a way that follows their needs
• Use calming processes such as rocking or calmly singing in response to emotional expression and note what helps to sooth and support the baby
• Learn lullabies and other songs that babies know from home and sing them to the babies for comfort.
• Make sure that babies, toddlers and young children have access to their comfort object whenever they need it.
• Show babies they are safe and loved by comforting them when experiencing frustration and anxiety. 
• Share in babies’ happy and joyful experiences, joining in with their excitement without overwhelming them with your responses.
• Be consistent in your responses so that babies gradually become aware of reasonable boundaries
• Support babies and young children in their play with others modelling caring and respectful behaviours and affirming their pro-social behaviours.
• Be alert to unexplained changes in behaviour or unusual injuries a child has and take action within safeguarding guidelines.

Listening and attention

• Get physically close making sure the baby can see your face. Make sure the baby is looking at you and wants to interact. This will help the baby to observe faces and notice communications.
• Show that you are present and tuned in by using eye contact and touch to create shared moments of interaction.
• Be attentive and leave space for the baby to start a “serve and return” conversation.
• Use a range of animated facial expressions to show babies you are interested in them.
• Use a lively voice with ups and downs to help babies tune in.
• Say the baby’s name to draw their attention.
• Imitate the baby’s responses to show you notice and value their contributions. 
• Encourage playfulness, laughter, turn-taking and responses, using “peek-a-boo” and action rhymes.
• Sing songs and rhymes during everyday routines.
• Use repeated sounds, and words and phrases so babies can begin to recognise particular sounds.
• Pay attention to babies’ teasing and emergence of humour.  They may use inanimate objects to tease and provoke your reaction.
• Follow the baby’s focus and pay joint attention to what they are interested in.

Understanding

• Look at the baby and say their name.  Make eye contact and wait for them to react.
• Interpret and give meaning to the things young babies show interest in, e.g. when babies point to an object tell them what it is.
• Use an animated, enthusiastic face when interacting with children.
• Observe children as they watch their environment.
• Look out for strategies babies use to attract your attention, such as seeking eye contact, gestures such as pointing, facial expressions and intentional physical movement.
• Talk to babies about what you are doing and what is happening, so they will link words with actions, e.g. preparing lunch.
• Use actions including hands and finger plays to support your words, e.g. waving when you say bye bye.
• Speak clearly.  Babies respond well to a higher pitched, sing-song voice.
• Use and repeat single words while you share attention to an object or event, so the baby can gradually link the word to its meaning.

Speaking

• Try to “tune in” to the different messages young babies are attempting to convey, and respond.
• Look out for patterns of communications they use to invite you into encounters.  This might include being playful or physical movements and utterances. Bringing you toys, or holding out objects to you may indicate that they want to “talk”.
• Share the fun of discovery and value babies’ attempts at words, e.g., by picking up a doll in response to baba.
• When babies try to say a word, repeat it back so they can hear the name of the object clearly.
• Find out from parents the greetings they use in English and in languages other than English, and use them in the setting.
• Recognise and equally value all languages spoken and written by parents, practitioners and children.

Moving and handling

• Enable older babies to have at least three hours a day moving and being active, taken in short periods, across the day and according to the child’s interest.
• Develop a shared approach to managing risk that enables babies to explore and develop their abilities.
• Ensure that clothing supports babies’ mobility for crawling and is not hindering or restrictive.
• As much as possible, allow babies to put themselves into a sitting position rather than doing this for them.
• Engage babies in varied active physical experiences, such as bouncing, rolling, rocking, swooping and splashing, both indoors and outdoors.
• Encourage babies to use resources they can grasp, squeeze, tug and throw.
• Be aware that babies may have limited awareness of things that might be dangerous for them.
• Show babies different ways to make marks in dough or paint by swirling, poking or patting it.
• Whilst supporting babies’ drive to stand and walk, continue to encourage plenty of floor play and crawling.
• Help parents understand the value of waiting until babies are ready to take steps by themselves, rather than providing assistance to speed things along, so as to develop their own balance and control.
• Provide plenty of time for babies to have bare feet during floor play and crawling, so that their feet can develop well.

Health and self-care

• Find out from parents how their baby communicates needs. Ensure that parents and carers who speak languages other than English are able to share their views.
• Be ready to support babies when they experience changes in exploration energy and suddenly need adult attention: this response enables the physiological basis for later self-regulation.
• Use feeding, changing and bathing times to share finger and toe plays such as “Round and Round the Garden”.
• Allow enough time for respectful care, ensuring that babies know what is going to happen next, watching for their cues and allowing them the opportunity to participate in age appropriate ways.
• Make sure that clothing enables mobility and does not present any hazards, for example, jeans and dresses can prevent crawling and cause trips.
• Help babies use their feet in crawling and standing by removing footwear whenever possible.
• Explain to parents how supporting self-directed movement provides the basis for motor planning, self-regulation and lifelong wellbeing.
• Share toddler’s interest in noises in the environment when outside, helping them to  locate and understand the sound they have picked out.
• Discuss with parents about jointly taking care of teeth as they appear, introducing a cleaning routine that is enjoyable and links with nutrition

Reading

• Notice and support babies’ developing responses, gestures and movements as they learn to anticipate and join in with finger and word play.
• Make voice sounds and say words as babies explore print and digital books with adults -  leave pauses after words and sounds to encourage babies to begin to repeat them if they choose to.
• Sing simple songs and nursery rhymes with children, encouraging them to join in

Writing

• Encourage children to use their fingers and implements to explore and trace marks on a surface, e.g. using a spoon in their food, or a finger in the sand.
• Make marks together with babies and toddlers using a range of appropriate materials and tools.

Number

• Take opportunities during play to sing number rhymes..
• During personal care routines make a point of using numbers.
• Play “peek-a-boo” hiding games with toys and people.

Spatial Awareness

• Use spatial words during everyday play and routines.or one-word comments e.g.as you get children in and out of a highchair.
• Take opportunities to play hide and reveal games with objects in boxes and under cups.
• Support babies’ physical experience of positions and direction, e.g. describing up and down.

Shape

• When playing with malleable materials draw attention to shapes as they are created and changed.

Pattern

• Talk about patterns in the environment e.g. spots and stripes on clothing or bumps in the pavement.
• Spot opportunities to play “back and forth” and repetitive “again” games.

Measures

• During play and everyday contexts, comment on the sizes and weights of objects using a range of language such as big, huge, enormous, long, tall, heavy.
• Talk about what is going to happen and what has happened during the day using first, next and then.

People and communities

See Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language

The world

• Play hiding and finding games inside and outdoors.
• Plan varied arrangements of equipment and materials that can be used with babies in a variety of ways to maintain interest and provide challenges.
• Draw attention to things in different areas that stimulate interest, such as a patterned surface.

Technology

See Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically

Creating with materials

• Attend to how babies and children are using their whole body in sensing, exploring and experimenting with space, texture, sounds, rhythms, materials, and tools.
• Welcome the ways in which babies and children arrange, combine, transform, group, and sequence materials that both natural and manmade.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Notice the ways in which babies react to other babies and adults and the world that surrounds them.
• Tune into and sensitively respond to babies’ and children’s expressive and communicative actions.

Making relationships

• The setting offers a welcoming, calm, caring environment that is inviting and will make babies feel they want to come and play.  
• Implement a Key Person Approach, so that each child and their family have a special person to relate to and rely on.
• Continuing professional development and supervision to support attachment relationships between key persons and children in the setting.
• Develop close partnerships with parents/carers, learning from their knowledge and expertise about their baby
• Admissions are phased so that only one new child starts at a time to allow them to settle in gradually.
• Ensure the Key Person Approach underpins all provision for babies including personal care events, play and daily interactions with parents/carers.
• Arrange for staff absence to be covered by practitioners who are already familiar to the children.
• Allocate a secondary key person who takes responsibility for the care of babies when their key person is absent.
• The number of changes children make between groups and key person is reduced to as few as possible during their time in the setting.

• Organise working patterns and activities to allow the key person or secondary key person to be available to support babies and toddlers and their parents separating and reuniting at the beginning and end of the day.
• The day is predictable enough to give babies a sense of security but is flexible enough to respond to individual children’s patterns.
• Offer continuity and consistency for babies by the key person undertaking all their key children’s care needs; moving through each part of the bathroom, lunch and sleep routine together, rather than children moving from one adult to the next.
• The environment is designed so that the number of times the key person has to leave the room is limited. It helps for example, if the bathroom and feed preparation areas are en-suite.
• Group rooms are as home-like as possible and are decorated with photographs of the children’s families and other significant people, animals and places.
• There are low adult chairs that support practitioners when they are bottle-feeding babies and which also allow children to climb up onto their laps.
• Develop play opportunities centred on objects babies bring from home, as these help them to make transitions and experience continuity.
• Plan to have one-to-one time to interact with young babies when they are in an alert and responsive state and willing to engage.
• Create opportunities to sing to and with babies and young children.

Sense of self

• Allow for flexibility within practice so that the routines you follow offer continuity between home and setting.
• Learn from parents/carers about each baby’s family culture, traditions and languages.
• Share knowledge about each child’s language(s) by making a poster or book of greetings and key phrases to use
• Provide comfortable areas where parents, practitioners and young babies can be together.
• Create time at the beginning and end of each day to talk and reflect with parents about their baby’s daily needs, progress and development, with communication support for different language speakers and users.
• If appropriate, plan to have times when babies and older siblings or friends can be together.
• Place mirrors where babies can see their own reflection. Talk with them about what they see.
• Create sufficient safe space for babies to move, roll, stretch and explore.
• Provide objects and images that reflect the baby and their home.
• Provide types of food and styles of serving and eating that are familiar to each child.
• Display photos of family and other special people.
• Provide toys and open- ended play experiences that match the play interests and styles of individual babies.
• Provide play resources that reflect each baby’s home culture and that help them to make links with the smells and sounds of home.

Understanding emotions

• Observe babies’ emotional responses and plan the routines, the environment and play experiences to support them.
• Encourage parents to bring their baby’s comforter/transitional object to ease the change from home to setting.
• Create a cosy, quiet place for babies to be calm.
• Provide comfortable seating such as a sofa or cushions for baby and key person to be together.
• Create spaces and experiences in which babies feel secure enough to explore and play.
• Provide resources including picture books and stories that focus on a range of emotions.
• Store babies’ toys and comforters where they can find and reach them.
• Communicate with parents/carers daily to ensure continuity of care between home and setting.
• Communicate with sensitivity when interacting with parents who do not speak or understand English and draw on the language skills available where possible.
• Develop close partnerships with parents to discuss and agree boundaries of behaviour
• Maintain an awareness and understanding that children who have had adverse experiences may require additional all-round support.
• Ensure practitioners have regular opportunities to reflect on their emotional responses to the children and to their work as well as thinking about the children’s progress and planning play experiences.

Listening and attention

• Share stories, songs and rhymes from all cultures and in babies’ home languages and other languages common in communities.
• Share favourite stories, songs, rhymes or music as babies are settling to sleep, or at other quiet times.
• Sing frequently with young babies, encouraging them to join in.
• Create an environment which invites responses from babies and adults, for example, touching, smiling, smelling, feeling, listening, exploring, describing and sharing.
• Establish a familiar pattern by spending prolonged moments of time each day interacting with the baby, or a small group of babies.
• Consider what it feels like to use your voice in your environment – what kinds of soundscape and sensory atmosphere do children experience? Is the invitation to “join in” with this environment, using voices, bodies and objects to make noise, irresistible?

Understanding

• Let babies see and hear the sequence of actions you go through as you carry out familiar routines.
• Provide resources and spaces  that stimulate babies’ interests such as a shiny bell, a book or a mirror on the floor or on your lap.
• Find out from parents how babies make themselves understood at home.
• Confirm which is their home language.
• Display lists of words from different home languages, and invite parents and other adults to contribute. Include all languages in the community since seeing their languages reflected in the setting will encourage all parents to feel involved and valued.
• When singing rhymes and songs use actions to support children’s understanding of words and their relation to wider life.

Speaking

• Find out from parents the words that children use for things which are important to them, such as bankie for their comfort blanket, remembering to extend this question to home languages.
• Explain that strong foundations in a home language support the development of English.
• Tune into what different children enjoy and create environments where babbling and talking feels easy and comfortable and where children can experiment freely with the sounds they can make.
• Provide appropriate sensory experiences as well as opportunities for movement and private conversations and sound experiments – possibly in dens and cosy corners.

Moving and handling

• Alongside the continuing role of adult bodies, the floor is the best enabling environment for babies at this stage.
• Limit the time older babies spend in seats, highchairs, bouncers and other “containers” as this prevents the critical physical development that takes place through crawling.
• Plan space to encourage free movement, while being kept safe by attentive adults. 
• Maintain a familiar and nurturing environment that allows babies to feel secure, curious and adventurous, both indoors and outdoors.
• Provide large cushions, tunnels, slopes and low-level steps or platforms to stimulate and challenge toddlers.
• Offer continuous low-level surfaces outdoors as well as indoors, so that babies can pull up to a standing position, cruise sideways and take first steps.
• Provide sturdy push-along carts, wheeled toys and pull-along toys indoors and out for pushing and pulling.
• Use music to encourage and enjoy movements.
• Make play resources easily and simply accessible on shelves and open containers for children to reach and fetch for themselves.
• Provide resources that stimulate babies to handle and manipulate things, e.g. metal and wooden objects or board books.
• Use gloop (cornflour and water) in small trays so that babies can enjoy putting fingers into it and lifting them out.

Health and self-care

• Provide a comfortable, accessible place where babies can rest or sleep when they want to.
• Continue to provide supported sleeping, resting and withdrawal opportunities outdoors as well as inside, to best fit the conditions that individual babies need.
• Plan alternative activities for babies who do not need sleep at the same time as others do.
• Ensure mealtime seating allows young children to have feet firmly on the floor or foot rest.  This aids stability and upper trunk control supporting hand-to-mouth co-ordination.
• Help children to enjoy their food and appreciate healthier choices by combining favourites with new tastes and textures.
• Provide safe surroundings in which young children have freedom to move as they want, while being kept safe by watchful adults.
• Ensure that the environment is calm and not filled with noise or music, so that babies can attune to sounds and notice where they are and what they relate to - the 3D outdoor environment is very good for this.
• Avoid introducing hard shoes too early in walking development and limit the time that they are worn each day.

Reading

• Let children handle books and draw their attention to pictures.
• Tell and read stories, looking at and interacting with young babies, and using voice, intonation and gesture to prompt babies’ interactions.
• Draw on children’s home cultures to create meaningful reading experiences.
  • Make family stories using small photo albums or story apps with photos of family members, significant people in the child’s life and familiar everyday objects.
  • Expand these to include the stories, songs, rhymes and lives of those in local communities and wider histories and cultures.
• Provide opportunities for children to explore sound with drums, other instruments, kitchen pans and wooden spoons or upcycled resources.

Writing

• Provide a range of materials: sand, paint, early writing apps etc. for babies and toddlers to make marks with their hands and fingers, feet and bodies.
• Give children large sheets of paper, trays of gloop, paint, soil etc. to make marks collaboratively.

Number

• Plan to sing number rhymes with actions.Involve families in sharing number rhymes from home cultures.

Spatial Awareness

• Play games that involve curling and stretching, popping up and bobbing down.
• Provide boxes, cloths and bags for children to store, hide and transport items.
• Provide nested boxes, cups and toys of different sizes that fit inside each other.
• Share books that provide opportunities to use spatial language and describe movement.

Shape

• Provide blocks and boxes to stack, build and solve problems with.
• Provide a range of inset puzzles and support children as they explore matching shapes with spaces.

Pattern

• Sing familiar songs with repeated actions, jig to and tap out simple beats, encouraging children to join in.
• Provide items for children to make repetitive sounds.

Measures

• Provide big and little versions of objects for children to play with and compare.
• Share picture books showing objects of contrasting sizes.

People and communities

See Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication and Language

• Provide opportunities, both indoors and out, for babies and toddlers to see people and things beyond the baby room, including the activities of older children.

The world

• Provide lift-the-flap books to show something hidden from view.
• Play hide-and-seek outside.
• Provide a variety of interesting things for babies to see when they are looking around them, looking up at the ceiling or peering into a corner.
• Display and talk about photographs of babies’ favourite places.
• Take babies on regular outings to a range of local environments.

Technology

See Playing and exploring, Thinking creatively and critically

Creating with materials

• Create a rich and well-ordered environment that enables babies and children to use all their senses.
• Choose and select with intention the materials and tools available to children.
• Create the time and space that will ensure that children can engage in depth with a diverse range of materials.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Create a rich environment that enables babies and children to use all their senses.
• Provide babies and children with a range of. experiences to feed their imaginative potential, e.g. stories, images, music, natural and urban experiences, social encounters (mealtimes, shopping, visitors).

Making relationships

• Explores the environment, interacts with others and plays confidently while their parent/carer or key person is close by; using them as a secure base to return to for reassurance if anxious or in unfamiliar situations
• Shows empathy by offering comfort that they themselves would find soothing, e.g. their dummy
• Enjoys playing alone and alongside others and is also interested in being together and playing with other children
• Will often watch, follow and imitate each other in their play and will experiment with influencing others, co-operating together and also resisting coercion in their interactions
• Asserts their own ideas and preferences and takes notice of other people’s responses
• Will sometimes experience long periods of social engagement as overwhelming and may withdraw or collapse with frustration

Sense of self

• Is aware of and interested in their own and others’ physical characteristics, pointing to and naming features such as noses, hair and eyes
• Experiments with what their bodies can do through setting themselves physical challenges, e.g. pulling a large truck upstairs
• Begins to use me, you and I in their talk and to show awareness of their social identity of gender, ethnicity and ability
• Shows their growing sense of self through asserting their likes and dislikes, choices, decisions, and ideas. These may be different to those of the adult or their peers; often saying no, me do it or mine

Understanding emotions

• Expresses positive feelings such as joy and affection and negative feelings such as anger, frustration and distress, through actions, behaviours and a few words
• Experiences a wide range of feelings with great intensity, such as anger and frustration, which can be overwhelming and result in losing control of feelings, body and thinking
• Is aware of others’ feelings and is beginning to show empathy by offering a comfort object to another child or sharing in another child’s excitement
• Asserts their own agenda strongly and may display frustration with having to comply with others’ agendas and with change and boundaries

Listening and attention

• Listens to and enjoys rhythmic patterns in rhymes and stories, trying to join in with actions or vocalisations
• Enjoys rhymes and demonstrates listening by trying to join in with actions or vocalisations
• Pays attention to own choice of activity, may move quickly from activity to activity

Understanding

• Understands different  situations - able to follow routine events and activities using nonverbal cues
• Selects familiar objects by name and will go and find objects when asked, or identify objects from a group
• Understands simple sentences (e.g. Throw the ball)

Speaking

• Copies familiar expressions, e.g. Oh dear, All gone’
• Uses different types of everyday words (nouns, verbs and adjectives, e.g. banana, go, sleep, hot)
• Beginning to put two words together (e.g. Want ball, More juice) 
• Beginning to ask simple questions
• Beginning to talk about people and things that are not present
• Uses gestures, sometimes with limited talk, e.g. reaches toward toy, saying Want it

Moving and handling

• Develops security in walking upright using feet alternately and can also run short distances
• Walks upstairs facing forwards holding rail or hand of adult, with both feet onto a single step at a time
• Changes position from standing to squatting and sitting with little effort
• Participates in finger and action rhymes, songs and games, imitating the movements and anticipating actions
• Hands start to operate independently during a task that uses both, with each hand doing something different at the same time (e.g. holding a block in one hand and steadying the other block with the other hand.
• Shows interest, dances and sings to music rhymes and songs, imitating movements of others
• Can walk considerable distance with purpose, stopping, starting and changing direction
• Looks closely at small items and creatures, and can also see items at substantial distance, comfortably changing focus from one to the other
• When holding crayons, chalks etc, makes connections between their movement and the marks they make
• Uses gesture and body language to convey needs and interests and to support emerging verbal language use

Health and self-care

• Sleeps for 12-14 hours a day with one/two naps  Daytime sleeping continues to be important for healthy development
• Highly active in short bursts, with frequent and sudden need for rest or withdrawal
• Enjoys hugs and cuddles and seeks comfort from attachment figure when they feel the need
• Uses physical expression of feelings to release stress.
• Generally has up to 16 teeth – helps adult with brushing teeth
• Intentionally makes sounds with objects and actively responds to music and singing with whole-body dancing
• Develops own likes and dislikes in food and drink, willing to try new food textures and tastes
• Shows interest in indoor and outdoor clothing and shoes/wellingtons
• Clearly communicates wet or soiled nappy or pants, showing increasing awareness of bladder and bowel urges
• Helps with dressing/undressing and care routines, enjoying the rituals established for hand washing and teeth cleaning
• Feeds self with increasing need to be in control and holds cup with both hands, drinking without much spilling

Reading

• Is interested in and anticipates books and rhymes and may have favourites
• Begins to join in with actions and sounds in familiar song and book sharing experience

Writing

As toddlers develop, they increase their understanding of how their marks are symbolic and convey meaning. Their marks may not yet resemble letters and words but nonetheless may carry meaning for the child. 

• Begins to understand the cause and effect of their actions in mark making
• Knows that the marks they make are of value
• Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks

Comparison

• Responds to words like lots or more

Counting

• Says some counting words
• May engage in counting-like behaviour, making sounds and pointing or saying some numbers in sequence

Cardinality

• May use number words like one or two and sometimes responds accurately when asked to give one or two things

Spatial Awareness

• Enjoys filling and emptying containers
• Investigates fitting themselves inside and moving through spaces

Shape

• Pushes objects through different shaped holes, and attempts to fit shapes into spaces on inset boards or puzzles
• Beginning to select a shape for a specific space
• Enjoys using blocks to create their own simple structures and arrangements

Pattern

• Becoming familiar with patterns in daily routines
• Joins in with and predicts what comes next in a familiar story or rhyme
• Beginning to arrange items in their own patterns, e.g. lining up toys

Measures

• Shows an interest in size and weight
• Explores capacity by selecting, filling and emptying containers e.g. fitting toys in a pram
• Beginning to understand that things might happen now or at another time, in routines

People and communities

• Is curious about people and shows interest in stories about people, animals or objects that they are familiar with or which fascinate them
• Is interested in photographs of themselves and other familiar people and objects
• Enjoys stories about people and nature (birds, bees, snails, cats, dogs, etc) and is interested in photographs of themselves with these.

The world

• Is curious and interested to explore new and familiar experiences in nature: grass, mud, puddles, plants, animal life 
• Explores objects by linking together different approaches: shaking, hitting, looking, feeling, tasting, mouthing, pulling, turning and poking
• Remembers where objects belong
• Matches parts of objects that fit together, e.g. puts lid on teapot

Technology

• Anticipates repeated sounds, sights and actions, e.g. when an adult demonstrates an action toy several times
• Shows interest in toys with buttons, flaps and simple mechanisms and begins to learn to operate them

Creating with materials

• Continues to explore and experiment with an increasing range of media and movement through   multi-sensory exploration and expression
• Moves while singing/vocalising, whilst listening to sounds and music, while playing with sound makers/instruments 
• Mirrors and improvises actions they have observed, e.g. clapping or waving
• Sings/vocalises whilst listening to music or playing with instruments/sound makers
• Notices and becomes interested in the transformative effect of their action on materials and resources

Being imaginative and expressive

• Expresses self through physical actions and sound
• Pretends that one object represents another, especially when objects have characteristics in common
• Creates sound effects and movements, e.g. creates the sound of a car, animals

Making relationships

• Enable children to explore by being a secure base for them; sitting close by and at their level to show that you are physically and emotionally available.
• Support a toddler’s explorations by drawing their attention to interesting things and smiling and nodding as they explore
• Support children who are new to a group by working closely with parents/carers to gradually settle them in over time, and allowing the child to stay close to you as much as they need.
• Give your full attention when young children look to you for a response.
• Be on hand to support social interactions between children.
• Model gentleness and kindness in your interactions with children and each other.
• Help toddlers to understand each other’s thoughts and needs by suggesting useful phrases, commenting on what might be going on in their minds and modelling respectful and considerate responses during play.
• Cultivate a sense of belonging by involving all children in welcoming and caring for one another and in the shared organisational tasks of the group.
• Use mealtimes as ideal occasions for children to practice social skills by sitting together in small groups with their key person.
• Play name games to welcome children to the setting and help them get to know each other and the staff
• Get to know each of your key children’s likes and dislikes and ways of eating.
• Soothe each of your key children to sleep in the way agreed with their parent and respect their individual “coming to” time.
• Allow enough time in the bathroom, at lunch and when getting ready to sleep, to support toddlers to be as autonomous as they can.
• Do not allow your own attitudes to food, bodily waste or dirt to make a caring time negative for a child.

Sense of self

• Use play and stories to positively support toddlers’ understanding of their physical selves and social identities.
• Share toddlers’ pleasure when they do something for themselves and celebrate by sharing with others such as parents, other children or practitioners.
• Recognise a child’s growing sense of agency and respect their attempts to gain independence by giving time for doing things for themselves in routines.
• Making choices is important for all children. Consider, with parents/carers and other professionals, ways in which you provide for children with disabilities to make choices.
• Provide toddlers with opportunities to practise making choices and decisions such as when serving themselves from dishes on the lunch table.
• Support toddlers’ autonomy by involving them in the daily organisation of the home or group by setting the table, for example.
• Be close by and available to provide encouragement and support when a toddler needs it but show trust in their capabilities.
• Be aware of and alert to possible dangers, while recognising the importance of encouraging young children’s sense of exploration and risk-taking.
• Offer extra support to children in new situations where they may not understand the expectations or have confidence in their abilities.
• Recognise and value toddlers unique interests and abilities by following and building on what they show you about their play interests and preferences.
• Be sensitive to differences in attitudes and expectations amongst families and maintain a two-way communication about their values and approach.
• Recognise each child’s social and cultural context by talking about the places children go to, celebrations they enjoy and the people they love.
• Notice your interactions with children of different genders, ethnicities or abilities; are you conveying any unconscious bias? Are you actively challenging stereotypes and assumptions?

Understanding emotions

• Be a secure base for toddlers to return to for “emotional refuelling” when encountering novel situations or social conflict and challenges.
• Create regular opportunities to be in very small groups or 1:1 times with the key person.
• Reduce frustration and conflict by keeping routines flexible so that young children can pursue their interests.
• Understand that “emotional storms” are a sign of a child being overwhelmed by strong emotions such as anger, frustration, fear, anxiety and sadness.
• Show empathy and stay close by to offer support and reassurance as the child calms after an emotional collapse.
• Use real life experiences to help children to understand a wide range of emotions in others and themselves by talking about different emotions as they occur during play.
• Model empathy and talk about others’ feelings. For example, Amaya is feeling sad today because she is missing her mummy.
• Understand that young children communicate their feelings through their behaviours and respond by showing empathy for their underlying feelings
• Demonstrate clear and consistent boundaries without being rigid and unreasonable
• Take children seriously and understand their motivations and underlying reasons for their actions.
• Show you are supportive by empathising when toddlers’ attempts at assertion and negotiation go wrong and helping them to find more effective ways.
• Show fairness; apply rules consistently but reasonably and flexibly when necessary.
• Support young children’s rights to be kept safe by others by helping them to assert themselves positively and by respecting their bodily integrity

Listening and attention

• Use natural gestures and/or signing e.g. waving “bye-bye”.
• Let the child choose the activity and follow their interest .
• Use percussion instruments to take turns.
• Sing songs and encourage repetitive action rhymes.
• Play alongside the child and talk together.
• Encourage young children to explore and imitate sound.
• Talk about the different sounds they hear, such as a tractor’s chug chug while sharing a book.

Understanding

• Use gestures and facial expression to help show your meaning.
• Be aware that young children’s understanding is much greater than their ability to express their thoughts and ideas. For example, a child may be able to go and hang their coat up when asked but say only coat up to explain what they did.
• Recognise young children’s competence and appreciate their efforts when they show their understanding of new words and phrases (Yes, that is a little flower).
• Use language appropriate to the child’s level of understanding.
• Stay with the child while they play, taking time to watch their movements and react to their initiations and adding words to describe what the child is doing.

Speaking

• Build vocabulary by giving choices, e.g. apple or satsuma?
• Model building sentences by repeating what the child says and adding another word, e.g. child says car, say mummy’s car or blue car.
• Give the child enough time to talk with silences to allow the child to respond or pauses to indicate turn talking.
• Show children how to pronounce or use words by responding and repeating what they say in the correct way, rather than saying they are wrong.
• Capitalise on the link between movement and the urge to make sounds to encourage children to “find their voice”, e.g. when swinging/swaying/jumping/sliding etc.
• Accept and respond to words and phrases in home languages.
• Encourage parents whose children are learning English as an additional language to continue to encourage use of the first language at home. This helps children learn English as well as being important for cultural and family reasons.
• Support children in using a variety of communication strategies, including signing such as with Makaton.
• Play with sounds and words children use, such as nonsense language, repeating made-up words or repetitive sounds, linking them to gestures or movement.

Moving and handling

• Enable toddlers to have at least three hours a day moving and being active, both indoors and outdoors, across the day and according to the child’s interest.
• Develop a shared team culture of managing risk positively so as to enable toddlers to explore and stretch their abilities.
• Continue to provide a visible, attentive “safe base” so that toddlers have the confidence for exploratory movement and self-driven physical activity.
• Encourage independence as young children explore particular patterns of movement, often referred to as schemas.
• Use words and simple phrases to describe the movements the child is making, especially in response to their gestures and body language.
• Play active games with toddlers that involve big movements through space, such as spinning, swooping and swinging.
• Play simple interactive finger games frequently so that the child can begin to anticipate hand movements.
• Treat mealtimes as an opportunity to help children to use fingers, spoon and cup to feed themselves.
• Involve toddlers in the routines for taking care of their environment both indoors and outdoors, such as washing windows and sweeping leaves.
• Find and create opportunities for toddlers to make things happen through their own actions.
• Make the most of water play to safely provide a different medium for babies and young children to experience their body and movements

Health and self-care

• Be ready to provide the kind of recovery method that each child needs, or to support the child in managing recovery for themselves.
• Continue discussions with parents about the critical nature of sufficient sleep and how to provide daytime naps.
• Be responsive to and encourage each child’s drive to become independent in self-care situations.
• Be aware of and learn about differences in cultural attitudes to children’s developing independence.
• Value children’s choices and encourage them to try something new and healthy.
• Create rituals and rhythms around dressing and hygiene routines, so that they are anticipated, enjoyable and effective.
• Help toddlers to select clothing for going outside and make sure there is ample time for changing for going out and coming back inside, so that this becomes a pleasurable part of the overall experience.
• Encourage efforts such as when a young child offers their arm to put in a coat sleeve.
• Discuss family expectations for toileting, since in some families and cultures young boys may be used to sitting rather than standing at the toilet.

Reading

• Encourage and support children’s responses to picture books and stories you read with them.
• Use different voices to tell stories and encourage young children to join in wherever possible.

Writing

• Encourage different mark-making movements – big, small, hard, soft, quick and slow, and different shapes, circles, lines and dots.
• Tell children about the marks you are making and encourage them to talk to you about theirs.
• Value these early mark making activities by sharing them with others including parents and carers.
• Write down (scribe) children’s words, and read them back to children.

Comparison

• Talk with young children about lots, more, not many and not enough as they play.
• Draw attention to contrasting differences and changes in amounts e.g. adding more bricks to a tower or eating things up.

Counting

• Model counting things in everyday situations and routines.
• Take opportunities to say number words in order with children as they play, e.g. 1,2,3 go!

Cardinality

• Use number words in meaningful contexts, e.g. Here is your other mitten. Now we have two.

Spatial Awareness

• Model thinking during tidy up routines to promote logic and reasoning about where things fit in or are kept.
• Support children’s interest in body-sized spaces and provide commentary on the child going inside,  under, over, between and squeezing through,.
• Look for opportunities to use spatial language during play activities.

Shape

• Model thinking about the properties of shapes when selecting them to fit into spaces, e.g. Oh look, we need a round one.
• When playing alongside children who are building, provide commentary about the shapes you are using.

Pattern

• Highlight different times of the day and talk about what comes next within the pattern of the day.
• Leave a space for children to do the next action or word in familiar songs and stories with repeating elements.
• Comment on what is the same and what is over and over again in patterns found in the environment.

Measures

• Use the language of size and weight as children are involved in everyday play and routines.
• Use the language of capacity as children explore water or sand to encourage them to think about when something is full, empty or holds more.
• Emphasise the sequence within familiar activities or routines.

People and communities

• Help children to learn each other’s names, e.g. through songs and rhymes, and use them when addressing children.
• Be positive about differences between people and support children’s acceptance of difference. Be aware that negative attitudes towards difference are learned from examples the children witness.
• Ensure that each child is recognised as a valuable contributor to the group.
• Celebrate and value cultural, religious and community events and experiences.

The world

• Talk with children about their responses to sights, sounds and smells in the environment indoors, in playgrounds, with nature in gardens and parks and discover what they like about playing outdoors.
• Encourage young children to explore puddles, trees and surfaces such as grass, concrete or pebbles.
• Introduce principles of recycling, planting and care for our resources.

Technology

• Comment on the ways in which young children investigate how to push, pull, lift or press parts of toys and domestic equipment.
• Talk about the effect of children’s actions, as they investigate what things can do.

Creating with materials

• Listen to and enjoy with children a variety of sounds, and music from diverse cultures.
• Sensitively introduce children to language to describe sounds and rhythm, e.g. loud and soft, fast and slow.
• Understand that young children’s creative and expressive processes are part of their development of thinking and communicating as well as being important in their own right.
• Become familiar with the properties and characteristics of materials and tools.
• Observe, analyse and document the processes involved in a child’s creative and expressive processes, to support greater understanding, inform planning and share with families, carers, and other professionals.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Show genuine interest and be willing to play along with a young child who is beginning to pretend.
• Model or join in pretend play, such as pretending to drink from an empty toy cup.

Making relationships

• Display photographs of practitioners, so that when children arrive, their parents can show them who will be there to take care of them.
• Support children who are new to a group by gradually settling them in over time so they can get to know the people, the environment and the routines.
• Plan times for children to be with their key person, individually and in their key group.
• Plan routine care events to support the development of close relationships between the key person and child and to support children’s friendships
• Ensure that group times for toddlers are small, short and active and are in a familiar space with a familiar adult.
• Create areas in which children can sit and chat with friends, such as a snug den and cosy spaces.
• Provide opportunities for toddlers to play alone, alongside and with others.
• Provide duplicates of favourite items to reduce competition and conflict.
• Provide matching items for children and adults to mirror each other in play, e.g. two identical musical instruments.
• Provide resources that promote cooperative play between two children such as a double sized easel or a truck two children can ride.
• Ensure many opportunities for outdoor play where toddlers can be together without competing for space.

Sense of self

• Create displays and albums of photographs of the children and the activities they have participated in.
• Encourage children to take their own photographs within the setting.
• Displays, equipment and resources are reflective of the children’s linguistic social and cultural backgrounds and those of the wider community, so there are items that are familiar to each child.
• Share observations and consult with parents on each child’s interests, dispositions, wellbeing and achievements, whatever they may be.
• Adapt the environment to support the needs of children with mobility, visual or hearing impairment.
• Plan the environment so that storage for coats, nappies, shoes and comforters are labelled with individual children’s photographs and names so children can access them independently.
• Provide an environment that is stable and familiar so children can find what they need, feel secure and be autonomous in their play
• Plan personalised play that follows each child’s interests and possible lines of development
• Ensure materials are easily accessible so all children have access to them and can make choices in their play.
• Provide mark making and collage materials that allow children to accurately represent their skin colour and hair type.
• Offer play experiences that are equally attractive to girls and boys and can be accessed by children with a disability in the best way they can.

Understanding emotions

• Maintain consistency of key person relationships in the organisation of staffing
• Keep changes in group and routine to a minimum
• Ensure that observation and planning for children’s emotional needs is a central focus.
• Provide books, stories and puppets that can be used to model responding to others’ feelings and being helpful and supportive.
• Provide sufficient materials and duplicates of popular items to reduce conflict, e.g. ride on toys, construction toys, and several copies of the same book
• Create enough space and organise resources so that toddlers can play without becoming frustrated. 
• Create calm spaces inside and out, for retreat and relaxation
• Offer play opportunities with open-ended materials.
• Provide for vigorous physical play.

Listening and attention

• Collect resources that children can listen to and learn to distinguish between. These may include games that involve guessing which object makes a particular sound
• Encourage listening in its widest sense; this could include opportunities to listen to human noises, non-human noises, objects that make interesting noise, weather and other outdoor sounds.
• Provide opportunities to listen to the sounds of the local area, the home and the natural world.
• Listen to sounds that are easily identifiable and mysterious noises that are not. Model and encourage playful imaginative responses.

Understanding

• Plan play activities and provide resources which encourage young children to engage in symbolic play, e.g. putting a “baby” to bed and talking to it appropriately.
• Plan real world shared experiences such as visits, everyday tasks, or preparing activities in the setting.
• Use pictures, books, real objects, and signs alongside your words.

Speaking

• Allow time to follow young children’s lead and have fun together while developing vocabulary, e.g. saying We’re jumping up, going down.
• Where appropriate make opportunities to talk through and comment on some activities to highlight specific vocabulary or language structures, e.g. You’ve caught the ball. I’ve caught the ball. Eva’s caught the ball.
• Provide stories with repetitive phrases and structures to read aloud to children to support specific vocabulary and language structures.

Moving and handling

• Anticipate young children’s exuberance and ensure the space is clear and suitable for their rapid and sometimes unpredictable movements.
• Provide opportunities to swing, spin and bounce.
• Provide different arrangements of toys and soft play materials to encourage crawling, tumbling, rolling and climbing.
• Use music to stimulate exploration with rhythmic movements.
• Ensure that toddlers spend lots of time outdoors experiencing uneven ground and changing gradients.
• Provide a daily walk (out of pushchairs) in the immediate locality: the same walk every day is most valuable at this age.
• Provide a range of wheeled toys indoors and outdoors, such as trundle trikes, buggies for dolls, push carts and wheelbarrows.
• Offer “heuristic” (exploratory) play with sets of simple natural and household objects for toddlers to manipulate, investigate and find out what they can make them do.
• Provide items for filling, emptying and carrying, and a variety of materials to put into them.
• Provide materials that enable children to help with care-taking tasks such as sweeping, washing, pouring and digging.
• Provide sticks, rollers and moulds for young children to use in dough, clay, mud or sand.

Health and self-care

• Set up places, outdoors as well as indoors, for toddlers to take naps during the day: daytime sleep can be much more refreshing and successful when provided outside.
• Ensure that there are plenty of different places and ways, indoors and outdoors, that toddlers can find withdrawal, softness and calm in the moment that they need it.
• Provide ample seating (such as a sofa inside or swing-seat outside) so that toddlers can snuggle with adults and other children.
• Ensure that there is time for young children to complete a self-chosen task, such as putting on their own shoes.
• Establish routines that enable children to look after themselves, providing ample time for this.
• Create time for discussing options so that young children have choices between healthy options, such as whether they will drink water or milk.
• Place water containers where children can find them easily and get a drink when they need one.
• Consider providing a sturdy ladder so that toddlers can choose to climb up onto the changing and dressing table by themselves: this will encourage their involvement in care routines

Reading

• Provide digital recordings  of rhymes, stories, sounds and spoken words.
• Provide picture books, books with flaps or hidden words, and books with accompanying story apps.
• Provide story sacks for children to take home, for parents to read books with their children and talk about stories.
• Suggest to parents they might encourage children to take part during telephone and video calls, through smiling, making sounds and words.

Writing

• Introduce a range of appropriate implements including large brushes, chalk and crayons, sticks and sponges for children to trace patterns and shapes.
• Offer children a range of different surfaces to make marks on, inside and out, e.g. chalkboards, light boxes, sand and pathways.
• Provide a broad range of opportunities for early writing experiences through sensory and symbolic play.

Comparison

• Play hiding games so children notice that something has ‘gone’.
• Provide varied sets of objects for playful opportunities for children to independently explore ‘lots’, ‘more’, ‘not many’ and ‘not enough’.

Counting

• Count while engaging in everyday tasks and while moving around.
• Sing songs with counting strings.

Spatial Awareness

• Designate specific places or spaces for items to be kept and fitted into for tidying.
• Respect children’s urge to explore spaces, to get inside and move between.
• Build towers up for the child to knock down.
• Provide shape sorters and packaging where children can hide, enclose or post items through holes.

Shape

• Provide a range of inset board and puzzles with large pieces.
• Provide a range of construction materials for independent play.
• Organise storage by shape, with photos or silhouettes to show where things are kept,

Pattern

• Plan to share stories and songs that contain repeated elements which help children to anticipate what might come next.

Measures

• Provide a range of objects, including big, heavy and awkward ones that can be transported, both indoors and outdoors.
• Provide different sizes and shapes of bags, boxes and containers  so that children can experiment with filling, experiencing weight and size.
• Plan to share images and books which show the order of daily routines.

People and communities

• Collect stories for, and make books about, children in the group, showing things they like to do and things that are important to them, in languages that are relevant to them wherever possible.
• Provide books and resources which represent children’s diverse backgrounds and which avoid negative stereotypes, ensuring different cultures are represented but especially the backgrounds of the children in the room.
• Make photographic books about the children in the setting and encourage parents to contribute to these.
• Provide positive images of all children including those with diverse physical characteristics, including disabilities.
• Support good ecological habits in daily life by providing first-hand experiences, e.g. waste disposal by putting papers in recycling bins, helping planting flowers and seeds, provisioning bird tables, leaf piles for hedgehogs and woodlice.

The world

• Develop the use of the outdoors so that young children can investigate features, e.g. a mound, a path or a wall, and experience weather, large spaces and seasonal change.
• Provide a collection of sets of items for children to explore how objects can be combined together in heuristic play sessions.

Technology

• Have available robust resources with knobs, flaps, keys or shutters.
• Incorporate technology resources that children recognise into their play, such as a camera

Creating with materials

• Offer a variety of objects that will make different sounds, such as wood, pans and plastic bottles filled with different things.
• Create opportunities to encounter and revisit key materials, resources and tools where children can further explore their properties including form, colour, texture, composition. 
• Create space and time for movement and dance both indoors and outdoors.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Provide a range of resources including familiar and non-specific items that can be used in a range of ways, such as magazines, real kitchen items, fabric, hoops, sponges, rope etc.

Making relationships

• Builds relationships with special people but may show anxiety in the presence of strangers
• Is becoming more able to separate from their close carers and explore new situations with support and encouragement from another familiar adult
• Shows some understanding that other people have perspectives, ideas and needs that are different to theirs, e.g. may turn a book to face you so you can see it
• Shows empathy and concern for people who are special to them by partially matching others’ feelings with their own, e.g. may offer a child a toy they know they like
• Is beginning to be able to cooperate in favourable situations, such as with familiar people and environments and when free from anxiety.
• Seeks out others to share experiences with and may choose to play with a familiar friend or a child who has similar interest.

Sense of self

• Knows their own name, their preferences and interests and is becoming aware of their unique abilities
• Is developing an understanding of and interest in differences of gender, ethnicity and ability
• Shows a sense of autonomy through asserting their ideas and preferences and making choices and decisions
• Experiments with their own and other people’s views of who they are through their play, through trying out different behaviours, and the way they talk about themselves
• Is gradually learning that actions have consequences but not always the consequences the child hopes for

Understanding emotions

• Expresses the self-aware emotions of pride and embarrassment as well as a wide range of other feeling
• Can feel overwhelmed by intense emotions, resulting in an emotional collapse when frightened, frustrated, angry, anxious or over-stimulated
• Is becoming able to think about their feelings as their brain starts to develop the connections that help them manage their emotions
• Seeks comfort from familiar adults when needed and distracts themselves with a comfort object when upset
• Responds to the feelings of others, showing concern and offering comfort
• May recognise that some actions can hurt or harm others and begins to stop themselves from doing something they should not do, in favourable conditions
• Participates more in collective cooperation as their experience of routines and understanding of some boundaries grows

Listening and attention

• Listens with interest to the noises adults make when they read stories
• Recognises and responds to many familiar sounds, e.g. turning to a knock on the door, looking at or going to the door
• Shows interest in play with sounds, songs and rhymes
• Single channelled attention; can shift to a different task if attention fully obtained – using child’s name helps focus.

Understanding

• Identifies action words by following simple instructions, e.g. Show me jumping
• Beginning to understand more complex sentences, e.g. Put your toys away and then sit on the carpet
• Understands who, what, where in simple questions (e.g. Who’s that? Who can? What’s that? Where is?)
• Developing understanding of simple concepts (e.g. fast/slow, good/bad)

Speaking

• Uses language to share feelings, experiences and thoughts
• Holds a conversation, jumping from topic to topic
• Learns new words very rapidly and is able to use them in communicating
• Uses a variety of questions (e.g. what, where, who)
• Uses longer sentences (e.g. Mummy gonna work)
• Beginning to use word endings (e.g. going, cats)

Moving and handling

• Sits up from lying down, stands up from sitting and squats with steadiness to rest or play with object on the ground, and rises to feet without using hands.
• Sits comfortably on a chair with both feet on the ground
• Runs safely on whole foot
• Moves in response to music, or rhythms played on instruments such as drums or shakers
• Jumps up into the air with both feet leaving the floor and can jump forward a small distance
• Begins to walk, run and climb on different levels and surfaces
• Begins to understand and choose different ways of moving
• Kicks a stationary ball with either foot, throws a ball with increasing force and accuracy and starts to catch a large ball by using two hands and their chest to trap it
• Climbs up and down stairs by placing both feet on each step while holding a handrail for support
• Uses wheeled toys with increasing skill such as pedalling, balancing, holding handlebars and sitting astride
• May be beginning to show preference for dominant hand and/or leg/foot
• Turns pages in a book, sometimes several at once
• Shows increasing control in holding, using and manipulating a range of tools and objects such as tambourines, jugs, hammers, and mark making tools
• Holds mark-making tools with thumb and all fingers

Health and self-care

• Very energetic in short bursts and needs time for rest and calm with at least three hours of a day of exercise including moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity, spread throughout the day
• Needs to sleep for 10–13 hours in a 24-hour period which may include a nap, with regular sleep and wake-up times
• Feeds self competently
• Can hold a cup with two hands and drink well without spilling
• Develops some independence in self-care and shows an awareness of routines such as handwashing or teeth cleaning but still often needs adult support
• Develops increasing understanding of and control of the bowel and bladder urges and starts to communicate their need for the preferred choice of potty or toilet
• Able to help with and increasingly independently put on and take off simple clothing items such as hats, unzipped jackets, wellington boots
• Begins to recognise danger and seeks the support and comfort of significant adults
• Can increasingly express their thoughts and emotions through words as well as continuing to use facial expressions

Reading

• Has some favourite stories, rhymes, songs, poems or jingles
• Repeats and uses actions, words or phrases from familiar stories
• Fills in the missing word or phrase in a known rhyme, story or game, e.g. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a …”
• Begins to recognise familiar logos from children's popular culture, commercial print or icons for apps
• Enjoys rhythmic and musical activity with percussion instruments, actions, rhymes and songs, clapping along with the beat and joining in with words of familiar songs and nursery rhymes

Writing

• Distinguishes between the different marks they make
• Enjoys drawing and writing on paper, on screen and on different textures, such as in sand or playdough and through using touch-screen technology.

Comparison

• Beginning to compare and recognise changes in numbers of things, using words like more, lots or same

Counting

• Begins to say numbers in order, some of which are in the right order (ordinality)

Cardinality (How many?)

• In everyday situations, takes or gives two or three objects from a group
• Beginning to notice numerals (number symbols)
• Beginning to count on their fingers.

Spatial Awareness

• Moves their bodies and toys around objects and explores fitting into spaces
• Begins to remember their way around familiar environments
• Responds to some spatial and positional language
• Explores how things look from different viewpoints including things that are near or far away

Shape

• Chooses puzzle pieces and tries to fit them in
• Recognises that two objects have the same shape
• Makes simple constructions

Pattern

• Joins in and anticipates repeated sound and action patterns
• Is interested in  what happens next using the pattern of everyday routines

Measures

• Explores differences in size, length, weight and capacity
• Beginning to understand some talk about immediate past and future
• Beginning to anticipate times of the day such as mealtimes or home time

People and communities

• Has a sense of own immediate family and relations and pets
• In pretend play, imitates everyday actions and events from own family and cultural background, e.g. making and drinking tea, going to the barbers, being a cat, dog or bird
• Beginning to have their own friends
• Learns that they have similarities and differences that connect them to, and distinguish them from, others

The world

• Notices detailed features of objects in their environment
• Can talk about some of the things they have observed such as plants, animals, natural and found objects
• Enjoys playing with small world reconstructions, building on first-hand experiences, e.g. visiting farms, garages, train tracks, walking by river or lake

Technology

• Seeks to acquire basic skills in turning on and operating some digital equipment
• Operates mechanical toys, e.g. turns the knob on a wind-up toy or pulls back on a friction car
• Plays with water to investigate “low technology” such as washing and cleaning
• Uses pipes, funnels and other tools to carry/transport water from one place to another

Creating with materials

• Joins in singing songs
• Creates sounds by rubbing, shaking, tapping, striking or blowing
• Shows an interest in the way sound makers and instruments sound and experiments with ways of playing them, e.g. loud/quiet, fast/slow
• Experiments with ways to enclose a space, create shapes and represent actions, sounds and objects
• Enjoys and responds to playing with colour in a variety of ways, for example combining colours  
• Uses 3D and 2D structures to explore materials and/or to express ideas

Being imaginative and expressive

• Uses everyday materials to explore, understand and represent his world – his ideas, interests and fascinations
• Begins to make believe by pretending using sounds, movements, words, objects Beginning to describe sounds and music imaginatively, e.g. scary music
• Creates rhythmic sounds and movements

Making relationships

• Enable children to explore by being a secure base for them; sitting close by and at their level to show that you are physically and emotionally available.
• Support a toddler’s explorations by drawing their attention to interesting things and smiling and nodding as they explore
• Support children who are new to a group by working closely with parents/carers to gradually settle them in over time, and allowing the child to stay close to you as much as they need.
• Give your full attention when young children look to you for a response.
• Be on hand to support social interactions between children.
• Model gentleness and kindness in your interactions with children and each other.
• Help toddlers to understand each other’s thoughts and needs by suggesting useful phrases, commenting on what might be going on in their minds and modelling respectful and considerate responses during play.
• Cultivate a sense of belonging by involving all children in welcoming and caring for one another and in the shared organisational tasks of the group.
• Use mealtimes as ideal occasions for children to practice social skills by sitting together in small groups with their key person.
• Play name games to welcome children to the setting and help them get to know each other and the staff
• Get to know each of your key children’s likes and dislikes and ways of eating.
• Soothe each of your key children to sleep in the way agreed with their parent and respect their individual “coming to” time.
• Allow enough time in the bathroom, at lunch and when getting ready to sleep, to support toddlers to be as autonomous as they can.
• Do not allow your own attitudes to food, bodily waste or dirt to make a caring time negative for a child.

Sense of self

• Use play and stories to positively support toddlers’ understanding of their physical selves and social identities.
• Share toddlers’ pleasure when they do something for themselves and celebrate by sharing with others such as parents, other children or practitioners.
• Recognise a child’s growing sense of agency and respect their attempts to gain independence by giving time for doing things for themselves in routines.
• Making choices is important for all children. Consider, with parents/carers and other professionals, ways in which you provide for children with disabilities to make choices.
• Provide toddlers with opportunities to practise making choices and decisions such as when serving themselves from dishes on the lunch table.
• Support toddlers’ autonomy by involving them in the daily organisation of the home or group by setting the table, for example.
• Be close by and available to provide encouragement and support when a toddler needs it but show trust in their capabilities.
• Be aware of and alert to possible dangers, while recognising the importance of encouraging young children’s sense of exploration and risk-taking.
• Offer extra support to children in new situations where they may not understand the expectations or have confidence in their abilities.
• Recognise and value toddlers unique interests and abilities by following and building on what they show you about their play interests and preferences.
• Be sensitive to differences in attitudes and expectations amongst families and maintain a two-way communication about their values and approach.
• Recognise each child’s social and cultural context by talking about the places children go to, celebrations they enjoy and the people they love.
• Notice your interactions with children of different genders, ethnicities or abilities; are you conveying any unconscious bias? Are you actively challenging stereotypes and assumptions?

Understanding emotions

• Be a secure base for toddlers to return to for “emotional refuelling” when encountering novel situations or social conflict and challenges.
• Create regular opportunities to be in very small groups or 1:1 times with the key person.
• Reduce frustration and conflict by keeping routines flexible so that young children can pursue their interests.
• Understand that “emotional storms” are a sign of a child being overwhelmed by strong emotions such as anger, frustration, fear, anxiety and sadness.
• Show empathy and stay close by to offer support and reassurance as the child calms after an emotional collapse.
• Use real life experiences to help children to understand a wide range of emotions in others and themselves by talking about different emotions as they occur during play.
• Model empathy and talk about others’ feelings. For example, Amaya is feeling sad today because she is missing her mummy.
• Understand that young children communicate their feelings through their behaviours and respond by showing empathy for their underlying feelings
• Demonstrate clear and consistent boundaries without being rigid and unreasonable
• Take children seriously and understand their motivations and underlying reasons for their actions.
• Show you are supportive by empathising when toddlers’ attempts at assertion and negotiation go wrong and helping them to find more effective ways.
• Show fairness; apply rules consistently but reasonably and flexibly when necessary.
• Support young children’s rights to be kept safe by others by helping them to assert themselves positively and by respecting their bodily integrity

Listening and attention

• Model being a listener by listening to children and taking account of what they say in your responses to them.
• Have conversations with children as part of everyday activities
• Play alongside children and talk with them as part of playful encounters
• Model and encourage language for thinking by using phrase such as I wonder..., What if…,  I have an idea.
• Encourage repetition, rhythm and rhyme by using tone and intonation as you tell, recite or sing stories, poems and rhymes from books.
• Be aware of and actively support the needs of children learning English as an additional language from a variety of cultures and ask parents to share their favourite stories, rhymes and songs in their home languages.

Understanding

• Be attentive and respond to children’s talk in an appropriate and positive way.
• Use talk to describe what children are doing by providing a running commentary, e.g. Oh, I can see what you are doing. You have to put the milk in the cup first.
• Provide opportunities for children to talk with other children and adults about what they see, hear, think and feel.
• Talk slowly enough for the child to understand.
• Provide words by labelling objects, actions and abstract things like feelings.
• Stay with the child while they play, play alongside the child and show attentive companionship as you share conversations.

Speaking

• Wait and allow the child time to start the conversation.
• Follow the child’s lead to talk about what they are interested in.
• Give children thinking time.  Wait for them to think about what they want to say and put their thoughts into words, without jumping in too soon to say something yourself.
• In conversations and playful encounters with children, model language a step beyond the child’s language use. 
• Use the child’s voicing/speech attempts to lead play and encounters.
• For children learning English as an additional language, value non-verbal communications and those offered in home languages.
• Without comment, observe and then mirror a child’s interesting movement or series of movements. This might lead to a nonverbal “serve and return” movement dialogue, with the child leading the “conversation”.  This can be very powerful with reluctant speakers or children not yet ready to use English.
• Add words to what children say, e.g. child says Brush dolly hair, you say Yes, Lucy is brushing dolly’s hair.
• Talk with children to make links between their body language and words, e.g. Your face does look cross. Has something upset you?
• Introduce new words in the context of play and activities.
• Use a lot of statements and comments and fewer questions to build natural conversation.  When you do ask a question, use an open question with many possible answers.
• Show interest in the words children use to communicate and describe their experiences.
• Expand on what children say by repeating it and adding a few more words, helping children use more complex sentences.
• Use lively intonation and animated expression when speaking with children and reading texts.
• Talk to the child about family life, stories from home.  Involve families in this.

Moving and handling

• Value the ways children choose to move.
• Give as much opportunity as possible for children to move freely between indoors and outdoors.
• Talk to children about their movements and help them to explore new ways of moving, such as squirming, slithering and twisting along the ground like a snake, and moving quickly, slowly or on tiptoe.
• Encourage body tension activities such as stretching, reaching, curling, twisting and turning.
• Be aware that children need to practise walking, climbing and jumping on a range of different surfaces
• Provide a range of wheeled toys to encourage children’s balance such as toys to pedal, scooters, toys to sit astride.
• Provide safe spaces where children can explore, challenge themselves and solve problems like how to balance on beams or climb ladders.
• Agree acceptable levels of risk and challenge to enable children to explore and acquire new skills and abilities.
• Encourage children in their efforts, such as to pour a drink from an appropriately sized jug and to manipulate objects in their play: Can you put the dolly’s arm in the coat?
• Provide an easily accessible range of tools, loose parts and construction equipment to encourage children’s emerging manipulative skills.

Health and self-care

• Provide quiet spaces for children to rest or nap and regular access to the outdoors or other spaces where children can be energetic
• Respond to how child communicates need for food, drinks, toileting and when uncomfortable.
• Support parents’ routines with young children’s self-care including toileting by having flexible routines and by encouraging children’s efforts at independence.
• Support children’s growing independence as they do things for themselves, such as pulling up their pants after toileting, handwashing, recognising differing parental expectations.
• Involve young children in preparing food.
• Give children the chance to talk about what they like to eat, while reinforcing messages about healthier choices.
• Remember that children who have limited opportunity to play outdoors may lack a sense of danger.
• Provide clothing or access to clothing and footwear to enable children to be outdoors in all weathers.

Reading

• Encourage children to use and extend the stories they hear in their play, using props and dressing up clothes as they relive and reinvent stories.
• Tune into words from stories that individual children particularly enjoy, e.g. children’s favourite words and words that are emotionally important to them. Revisit these words in meaningful interactions.
• Read stories that children already know, pausing at intervals to encourage them to “read” the next word.
• Encourage children to notice signs and symbols in everyday life, such as familiar logos and icons for apps.
• Encourage children to identify the sounds they hear in the environment and to explore making rhythms with musical instruments and upcycled resources.

Writing

• Listen and support what children tell you about their drawings and early writing.
• Write down (scribe) the words that children use and display these words, for example, with photos
• Co-create stories orally with individual children and in small groups. Scribe the stories and display them for children to look at independently or with a parent or friend.
• Encourage children to make recordings of their own stories (e.g. on a digital tablet) and create opportunities for children to perform their stories to each other.

Comparison/ Counting

• Include the number sequence in everyday contexts and songs so children experience the order of the numbers (ordinality)

Cardinality (How many?)

• Encourage children to explore the collections they make, comparing amounts and counting some of the items, emphasising the last number, e.g. 1,2,3. There are 3 leaves.
• Use opportunities to model and encourage counting on fingers.
• When singing number rhymes with props, draw attention to contrasting differences and changes in numbers, checking together How many now?
• Point out the number of things whenever possible, e.g. rather than just chairs, say four chairs.
• Encourage children to use marks to represent their mathematical ideas in role play.
• Help children to give or get two or three items, e.g. during snack time help children to take two pieces of fruit.

Spatial Awareness

• Encourage children to predict what they will see next on a familiar route.
• Take everyday opportunities to use words for position and direction accompanied by gesture (e.g. in, on, inside, under, over) using equivalent terms for these in home languages through liaison with families where possible.
• Enjoy games involving jumping, running and hiding and make very simple obstacle courses, e.g. going up and down.
• Model your thinking when arranging things, using some position words.
• Help children to create simple roads and rail tracks and talk about position.
• Value children’s explorations of spaces and viewpoints and their interest in how things look different.

Shape

• Chat about the shape of the pieces and the holes when fitting pieces into inset puzzles.
• Model comparing two objects to see if they have the same shape in purposeful contexts.
• Suggest choosing a particular shaped item for a purpose.
• Model your thinking when building.

Pattern

• Talk with children about the patterns you notice around you.
• Comment on and help children to recognise the patterns they make in their mark making, loose parts and construction.
• Draw children’s attention to the patterns in their routines by asking what comes next.

Measures

• Use everyday opportunities to describe everyday items and contexts using informal language of size (giant, teeny, big, little, huge, small), length (long, tall, short), weight (heavy, light) and capacity (full, empty).
• Observe children’s problem-solving when ordering things by size, e.g. stacking cups, sensitively supporting by offering one if they are really struggling.
• Look out for opportunities to compare things purposefully such as finding out whether a teddy will fit in a bed.
• When children talk about their experiences at home and in the setting, use some language of time (before, later, soon, next, after, morning, afternoon, evening, night-time). 
• In everyday activities, make a commentary about the sequence of events.
• When sharing stories and books, draw attention to routines and time sequences within them.

People and communities

• Talk to children about their friends, their families, and why they are important.
• Be sensitive to the possibility of children who may have lost special people or pets, either through death, separation, displacement or fostering/adoption.

The world

Tell stories about places and journeys.

Technology

• Support children in exploring the control technology of toys, e.g. toy electronic keyboard.
• Talk about digital and other electric equipment, what it does, what they can do with it and how to use it safely.
• Talk to children about “low technologies” such as washing and drying, transporting water and using water to make things “work”.

Creating with materials

• Help children to listen to music and watch dance when opportunities arise, encouraging them to focus on how sound and movement develop from feelings and ideas.
• Recognise that children can become fascinated by a pattern of actions or interactions with tools and materials, gaining confidence over extended periods of time.
• Encourage and support the inventive ways in which children use space, combine and transform both 3D and 2D materials.
• Be sensitive in how you support a child who is using line, colour, tone and form. It is not necessary for them to have the verbal language to explain, for example, drawing. The drawing itself is one of their multi-modal languages.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Observe and sometimes take part in children’s make-believe play in order to gain an understanding of their interests.
• Observe and reflect on the children’s own explorations and creations. 

Making relationships

• Display photographs of practitioners, so that when children arrive, their parents can show them who will be there to take care of them.
• Support children who are new to a group by gradually settling them in over time so they can get to know the people, the environment and the routines.
• Plan times for children to be with their key person, individually and in their key group.
• Plan routine care events to support the development of close relationships between the key person and child and to support children’s friendships
• Ensure that group times for toddlers are small, short and active and are in a familiar space with a familiar adult.
• Create areas in which children can sit and chat with friends, such as a snug den and cosy spaces.
• Provide opportunities for toddlers to play alone, alongside and with others.
• Provide duplicates of favourite items to reduce competition and conflict.
• Provide matching items for children and adults to mirror each other in play, e.g. two identical musical instruments.
• Provide resources that promote cooperative play between two children such as a double sized easel or a truck two children can ride.
• Ensure many opportunities for outdoor play where toddlers can be together without competing for space.

Sense of self

• Create displays and albums of photographs of the children and the activities they have participated in.
• Encourage children to take their own photographs within the setting.
• Displays, equipment and resources are reflective of the children’s linguistic social and cultural backgrounds and those of the wider community, so there are items that are familiar to each child.
• Share observations and consult with parents on each child’s interests, dispositions, wellbeing and achievements, whatever they may be.
• Adapt the environment to support the needs of children with mobility, visual or hearing impairment.
• Plan the environment so that storage for coats, nappies, shoes and comforters are labelled with individual children’s photographs and names so children can access them independently.
• Provide an environment that is stable and familiar so children can find what they need, feel secure and be autonomous in their play
• Plan personalised play that follows each child’s interests and possible lines of development
• Ensure materials are easily accessible so all children have access to them and can make choices in their play.
• Provide mark making and collage materials that allow children to accurately represent their skin colour and hair type.
• Offer play experiences that are equally attractive to girls and boys and can be accessed by children with a disability in the best way they can.

Understanding emotions

• Maintain consistency of key person relationships in the organisation of staffing
• Keep changes in group and routine to a minimum
• Ensure that observation and planning for children’s emotional needs is a central focus.
• Provide books, stories and puppets that can be used to model responding to others’ feelings and being helpful and supportive.
• Provide sufficient materials and duplicates of popular items to reduce conflict, e.g. ride on toys, construction toys, and several copies of the same book
• Create enough space and organise resources so that toddlers can play without becoming frustrated. 
• Create calm spaces inside and out, for retreat and relaxation
• Offer play opportunities with open-ended materials.
• Provide for vigorous physical play.

Listening and attention

• Use puppets and other props to encourage listening and responding when singing a familiar song or reading from a story book.
• Encourage children to learn one another’s names and to pronounce them correctly.
• Ensure all practitioners can pronounce the names of children, parents and other practitioners.
• Find out parents’ preferred names for themselves and their children.
• Where possible minimise background noise and visual distractions in the environment, and ensure spaces are separated enough for children to listen to each other. 
• Encourage talk in all spaces, both indoors and outdoors.

Understanding

• Include things which excite young children’s curiosity, such as hats, bubbles, shells, story books, seeds and snails, which reflect their wider living and non-living communities.
• Provide activities, such as cooking, where talk is used to anticipate or initiate what children will be doing, e.g. We need some eggs. Let’s see if we can find some in here.

Speaking

• Display pictures and photographs showing engaging, familiar or fantastical events, objects and activities and talk about them with the children.
• Provide activities which help children to learn to distinguish differences in sounds, word patterns and rhythms.
• Plan to encourage correct use of language by telling repetitive stories, and playing games which involve repetition of words or phrases.
• Provide opportunities for children to communicate in their home language.
• Help children to build their vocabulary, motivations and opportunities to experiment with talk by extending the range of their experiences. Understand  that often when an experience is unfamiliar, children might fall silent at first but choose to talk about it later.
• Foster children’s enjoyment of spoken and written language by providing interesting and stimulating play opportunities in which there is little pressure to talk but words, songs and rhymes are welcome.
• Continue to encourage movement activity to stimulate sound and verbal utterances as well as the opportunity to explore expressive sounds and words to match movement, particularly outdoors.
• Stimulating the vestibular system through age-appropriate swinging, spinning, sliding, swaying etc. may help reluctant speakers to use voice.
• Plan regular opportunities for children to speak, e.g. take turns having a toy animal at home, and then telling about the visit.
• Set up collaborative tasks, e.g. construction, food activities or story-making through role-play.
• Provide small world toys or puppets for children to act out familiar stories in their play.

Moving and handling

• Plan opportunities for children to tackle a range of levels and surfaces including flat and hilly ground, grass, pebbles, asphalt, smooth floors and carpets.
• Provide a range of large play equipment that can be used in different ways, such as boxes, ladders, A-frames and barrels.
• Plan time for children to experiment with equipment and to practise movements they choose.
• Provide opportunities for children to hang upside down, balance, swing backwards and forwards, roll down slopes, and spin round and round, allowing children to help understand their sense of space and self.
• Explain the importance of being outdoors and providing challenge in a safe environment to parents. Provide real and role-play opportunities for children to create pathways, e.g. road layouts, or going on a picnic.
• Use action rhymes, songs and games like “follow my leader” to encourage all children to be active
• Provide recorded music, scarves, streamers and musical instruments so that children can respond spontaneously to music.
• Plan activities that involve moving and stopping, such as musical bumps.
• Provide “tool boxes” containing things that make marks, so that children can explore their use both indoors and outdoors.

Health and self-care

• Allow children to pour their own drinks, serve their own food, choose a story, hold a puppet or water a plant.
• Provide support and advice for parents on healthy eating, oral hygiene and sleep expectations for their children
• Offer choices for children in terms of potties, trainer seats or steps.
• Create opportunities for moving towards independence, for example by using visual clues for the sequence of routines such as hand-washing.
• Provide pictures or objects representing options to support children in making and expressing choices.
• Choose some stories that highlight the consequences of choices.
• Ensure children’s safety, while not unduly inhibiting their risk-taking.
• Talk to children about simple rules for their safety such as holding on to handrails when walking downstairs
• Display a colourful daily menu showing healthy meals and snacks and discuss choices with the children, reminding them, e.g. that they tried something previously and might like to try it again or encouraging them to try something new.
• Be aware of eating habits at home and of the different ways people eat their food, e.g. that eating with clean fingers is as skilled and equally valued as using cutlery.
• Encourage children to select and attempt to put on suitable clothing for outdoor play.

Reading

• Find quality time every day to tell and read stories to children, using puppets, soft toys, or real objects as props.
• Provide stories, pictures and puppets which allow children to experience and talk about how characters feel.
• Include familiar environmental print in the role play area.
• Create frequent opportunities for singing, rhymes and music sessions.
• Provide a range of simple musical and percussion instruments, such as tambourines, shakers or xylophones.
• Include children in digital screen activity, for example, to recognise screen icons.

Writing

• Draw attention to marks, signs and symbols in the environment and talk about what they represent. Ensure this involves recognition of English, other languages and scripts.
• Provide materials which reflect cultural diversity, so children see symbols and marks with which they are familiar, and learn that there are many different script systems e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Greek and Braille.
• Try to have a notepad to hand (e.g. A5 size) in which you can scribe children’s stories and special words and share these stories and words with children.
• Ensure children see you writing for a purpose, e.g. a shopping list, message for parents, labels in children’s play areas or reminders for ourselves.

Comparison/ Counting

• Provide buckets and bags for children to create collections of objects which they can count.
• Provide mark-making materials indoors and outdoors for children to represent their own ideas in play.

Cardinality (How many?)

• Provide opportunities for children to explore cardinality in the environment using self-correcting resources, e.g. jigsaw with two ducks and the number two, or displays showing the numeral and the number of items.
• Sing counting songs and rhymes which help to develop children’s understanding of number.
• Say the counting sequence going to higher numbers, in a variety of contexts, indoors and out, and sometimes counting backwards.

Spatial Awareness

• Design outdoor spaces where children can learn through a variety of spatial experiences (going under, over, around, on top, through) and hear spatial language in context.
• Encourage children to freely communicate their mathematical thinking through gesture, talk and graphical signs.
• Plan stimulating indoor and outdoor spaces where children make choices about where to go and create their own routes. Provide materials to create trails.
• Provide resources for transporting. 

Shape

• Provide a range of inset and jigsaw puzzles of increasing complexity for children to choose.
• Provide a variety of construction materials including some with identical pieces so that children freely explore same and different.

Pattern

• Provide a range of natural and everyday materials, as well as blocks and shapes, with which to make patterns.
• Plan opportunities for children to experience pattern such as percussion, music and action games that involve repeated sounds or actions.

Measures

• Provide similar items of contrasting sizes so that children have many opportunities to encounter the language of size.
• Provide resources with clearly different weights to support direct comparison, and something to carry them in.
• Provide equipment with varied capacities and shapes in the sand, water, mud kitchen and role play areas.

People and communities

• Share photographs of children’s families, friends, pets or favourite people, both indoors and out.
• Support children’s understanding of difference and of empathy by using props such as puppets and dolls to tell stories about diverse experiences, ensuring that negative stereotyping is avoided.
• Ensure children have resources so that they can imitate everyday actions and events from their lives and that represent their culture.

The world

• 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.
• Provide story and information books about places, such as a zoo or the beach, to remind children of visits to real places.

Technology

• Provide safe equipment to play with, such as torches and walkie-talkies.
• Let children use machines like the photocopier to copy their own pictures.
• Provide a range of materials for children to “stain” and have a go at washing, rinsing and drying outside in the sunshine.
• Provide a range of pipes, funnels, containers, water wheels and water for children to play with.

Creating with materials

• Plan a varied and appropriate series of live performances for all young children, e.g. musicians, dancers, storytellers.
• Draw on a wide range of art works from a variety of cultural backgrounds to extend children’s experiences and to reflect their cultural heritages, e.g. architecture, ceramics, theatre.
• Continue to provide opportunities to encounter and revisit key materials, resources and tools through which children can further explore their properties including form, colour, texture and composition.
• Invite children to look at and touch unusual or interesting materials, artefacts and resources in their everyday environment, chosen for their design, beauty, pattern and ability to inspire exploration.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Offer a variety of stimulating resources that can be used in different ways both inside and outside e.g. fabric, boxes, sound makers, water, string bags and planks.
• Create time and space for children to develop their own creations, e.g. photographs, sounds, movement, constructions, stories, collages.

Making relationships

• Seeks out companionship with adults and other children, sharing experiences and play ideas
• Uses their experiences of adult behaviours to guide their social relationships and interactions
• Shows increasing consideration of other people’s needs and gradually more impulse control in favourable conditions, e.g. giving up a toy to another who wants it
• Practises skills of assertion, negotiation and compromise and looks to a supportive adult for help in resolving conflict with peers
• Enjoys playing alone, alongside and with others, inviting others to play and attempting to join others’ play

Sense of self

• Is becoming more aware of the similarities and differences between themselves and others in more detailed ways and identifies themself  in relation to social groups and to their peers
• Is sensitive to others’ messages of appreciation or criticism
• Enjoys a sense of belonging through being involved in daily tasks
• Is aware of being evaluated by others and begin to develop ideas about themselves according to the messages they hear from others
• Shows their confidence and self-esteem through being outgoing towards people, taking risks and trying new things or new social situations and being able to express their needs and ask adults for help

Understanding emotions

• Expresses a wide range of feelings in their interactions with others and through their behaviour and play, including excitement and anxiety, guilt and self-doubt
• May exhibit increased fearfulness of things like the dark or monsters etc and possibly have nightmares
• Talks about how others might be feeling and responds according to their his understanding of the other person’s needs and wants
• Is more able to recognise the impact of their her choices and behaviours/actions on others and knows that some actions and words can hurt others’ feelings
• Understands that expectations vary depending on different events, social situations and changes in routine, and becomes more able to adapt their behaviour in favourable conditions

Listening and attention

• Listens to others in one-to-one or small groups, when conversation interests them
• Listens to familiar stories with increasing attention and recall
• Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories
• Focusing attention – can still listen or do, but can change their own focus of attention
• Is able to follow directions (if not intently focused)

Understanding

• Understands use of objects (e.g. Which one  do we cut with?)
• Shows understanding of prepositions such as under, on top, behind by carrying out an action or selecting correct picture
• Responds to instructions with more elements, e.g. Give the big ball to me; collect up all the blocks and put them in the box
• Beginning to understand why and how questions

Speaking

• Beginning to use more complex sentences to link thoughts (e.g. using and, because)
• Able to use language in recalling past experiences
• Can retell a simple past event in correct order (e.g. went down slide, hurt finger)
• Uses talk to explain what is happening and anticipate what might happen next
• Questions why things happen and gives explanations.  Asks e.g. who, what, when, how
• Beginning to use a range of tenses (e.g. play, playing, will play, played)
• Continues to make some errors in language (e.g. “runned”) and will absorb and use language they hear around them in their community and culture
• Uses intonation, rhythm and phrasing to make the meaning clear to others
• Talks more extensively about things that are of particular importance to them
• Builds up vocabulary that reflects the breadth of their experiences
• Uses talk in pretending that objects stand for something else in play, e.g. This box is my castle

Moving and handling

• Climbs stairs, steps and moves across climbing equipment using alternate feet. Maintains balance using hands and body to stabilise
• Walks down steps or slopes whilst carrying a small object, maintaining balance and stability
• Runs with spatial awareness and negotiates space successfully, adjusting speed or direction to avoid obstacles
• Can balance on one foot or in a squat momentarily, shifting body weight to improve stability
• Can grasp and release with two hands to throw and catch a large ball, beanbag or an object
• Creates lines and circles pivoting from the shoulder and elbow
• Manipulates a range of tools and equipment in one hand, tools include paintbrushes, scissors, hairbrushes, toothbrush, scarves or ribbons

Health and self-care

• Can tell adults when hungry, full up or tired or when they want to rest, sleep or play
• Observes and can describe in words or actions the effects of physical activity on their bodies.
• Can name and identify different parts of the body
• Takes practical action to reduce risk, showing their understanding that equipment and tools can be used safely
• Can wash and can dry hands effectively and understands why this is important
• Willing to try a range of different textures and tastes and expresses a preference. Can name and identify different parts of the body
• Observes and controls breath, able to take deep breaths, scrunching and releasing the breath
• Can mirror the playful actions or movements of another adult or child
• Working towards a consistent, daily pattern in relation to eating, toileting and sleeping routines and understands why this is important
• Gains more bowel and bladder control and can attend to toileting needs most of the time themselves.
• Dresses with help, e.g. puts arms into open-fronted coat or shirt when held up, pulls up own trousers, and pulls up zipper once it is fastened at the bottom

Reading

• Listens to and joins in with stories and poems, when reading one-to-one and in small groups
• Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories
• Begins to be aware of the way stories are structured, and to tell own stories
• Talks about events and principal characters in stories and suggests how the story might end
• Shows interest in illustrations and words in print and digital books and words in the environment
• Recognises familiar words and signs such as own name, advertising logos and screen icons
• Looks at and enjoys print and digital books independently
• Knows that print carries meaning and, in English, is read from left to right and top to bottom
• Knows information can be relayed through signs and symbols in various forms (e.g. printed materials, digital screens and environmental print)
• Handles books and touch screen technology carefully and the correct way up with growing competence
• Begins to navigate apps and websites on digital media using drop down menu to select websites and icons to select apps
• Begins to develop phonological and phonemic awareness
  • Shows awareness of rhyme and alliteration
  • Recognises rhythm in spoken words, songs, poems and rhymes
  • Claps or taps the syllables in words during sound play
  • Hears and says the initial sound in words

Writing

• Makes up stories, play scenarios, and drawings in response to experiences, such as  outings
• Sometimes gives meaning to their drawings and paintings
• Ascribes meanings to signs, symbols and words that they see in different places, including those they make themselves
• Includes mark making and early writing in their play
• Imitates adults’ writing by making continuous lines of shapes and symbols (early writing) from left to right
• Attempts to write their own name, or other names and words, using combinations of lines, circles and curves, or letter-type shapes
• Shows interest in letters on a keyboard, identifying the initial letter of their own name and other familiar words
• Begins to make letter-type shapes to represent the initial sound of their name and other familiar words

Comparison

• Compares two small groups of up to five objects, saying when there are the same number of objects in each group, e.g. You’ve got two, I’ve got two. Same!

Counting

• May enjoy counting verbally as far as they can go
• Points or touches (tags) each item, saying one number for each item, using the stable order of 1,2,3,4,5.
• Uses some number names and number language within play, and may show fascination with large numbers
• Begin to recognise numerals 0 to 10

Cardinality

• Subitises one, two and three objects (without counting)
• Counts up to five items, recognising that the last number said represents the total counted so far (cardinal principle)
• Links numerals with amounts up to 5 and maybe beyond
• Explores using a range of their own marks and signs to which they ascribe mathematical meanings

Composition

• Through play and exploration, beginning to learn that numbers are made up (composed) of smaller numbers
• Beginning to use understanding of number to solve practical problems in play and meaningful activities
• Beginning to recognise that each counting number is one more than the one before
• Separates a group of three or four objects in different ways, beginning to recognise that the total is still the same

Spatial Awareness

• Responds to and uses language of position and direction
• Predicts, moves and rotates objects to fit the space or create the shape they would like

Shape

• Chooses items based on their shape which are appropriate for the child’s purpose
• Responds to both informal language and common shape names
• Shows awareness of shape similarities and differences between objects
• Enjoys partitioning and combining shapes to make new shapes with 2D and 3D shapes
• Attempts to create arches and enclosures when building, using trial and improvement to select blocks

Pattern

• Creates their own spatial patterns showing some organisation or regularity
• Explores and adds to simple linear patterns of two or three repeating items, e.g. stick, leaf (AB) or stick, leaf, stone (ABC)
• Joins in with simple patterns in sounds, objects, games and stories dance and movement, predicting what comes next

Measures

• In meaningful contexts, finds the longer or shorter, heavier or lighter and more/less full of two items
• Recalls a sequence of events in everyday life and stories

People and communities

• Shows interest in the lives of people who are familiar to them
• Enjoys joining in with family customs and routines
• Remembers and talks about significant events in their own experience
• Recognises and describes special times or events for family or friends
• Shows interest in different occupations and ways of life indoors and outdoors
• Knows some of the things that make them unique, and can talk about some of the similarities and differences in relation to friends or family

The world

• Comments and asks questions about aspects of their familiar world such as the place where they live or the natural world
• Talks about why things happen and how things work
• Developing an understanding of growth, decay and changes over time
• Shows care and concern for living things and the environment
• Begin to understand the effect their behaviour can have on the environment

Technology

• Knows how to operate simple equipment, e.g. turns on CD player, uses a remote control, can navigate touch-capable technology with support
• Shows an interest in technological toys with knobs or pulleys, real objects such as cameras, and touchscreen devices such as mobile phones and tablets
• Shows skill in making toys work by pressing parts or lifting flaps to achieve effects such as sound, movements or new images
• Knows that information can be retrieved from digital devices and the internet
• Plays with a range of materials to learn cause and effect, for example, makes a string puppet using dowels and string to suspend the puppet

Creating with materials

• Explores and learns how sounds and movements can be changed
• Continues to explore moving in a range of ways, e.g. mirroring, creating own movement patterns
• Enjoys joining in with moving, dancing and ring games
• Sings familiar songs, e.g. pop songs, songs from TV programmes, rhymes, songs from home
• Taps out simple repeated rhythms
• Develops an understanding of how to create and use sounds intentionally
• Continues to explore colour and how colours can be changed
• Develops an understanding of using lines to enclose a space, and begins to use drawing to represent actions and objects based on imagination, observation and experience
• Uses various construction materials, e.g. joining pieces, stacking vertically and horizontally, balancing, making enclosures and creating spaces
• Uses tools for a purpose

Being imaginative and expressive

• Uses movement and sounds to express experiences, expertise, ideas and feelings
• Experiments and creates movement in response to music, stories and ideas
• Sings to self and makes up simple songs
• Creates sounds, movements, drawings to accompany stories
• Notices what other children and adults do, mirroring what is observed, adding variations and then doing it spontaneously
• Engages in imaginative play based on own ideas or first-hand or peer experiences.
• Uses available resources to create props or creates imaginary ones to support play
• Plays alongside other children who are engaged in the same theme

Making relationships

• Continue to provide children with a secure base for them to return to and to explore from by being available if needed.
• Offer a warm and consistent presence, spending time playing and being with children in 1:1 and small groups as well as in the whole group.
• Show that you keep children “in mind” by referring to things you have noticed in their play or something that reminded you of them in some way.
• Model key skills of empathy, negotiation, compromise and positive assertion when playing with children and in your everyday interactions.
• Provide positive feedback during play, noticing and acknowledging children’s thoughtfulness towards each other.
• Support young children’s efforts to join in with others’ play and inviting others into their play.
• Use different resources such as social stories and Persona Dolls to help children to develop strategies for building and maintaining relationships.
• Offer calm and considered support for children as they experiences conflict with their peers. Use a problem-solving approach, e.g. You are fighting because you both want the blue bike, what can we do about this?
• Pause before intervening in children’s arguments to allow children time resolve issues if they can
• Recognise and respect children’s particular friendships
• Notice and celebrate young children’s valuable contributions to their relationships with others, e.g. to younger children, new children or new practitioners.
• Shy children or some with social and emotional difficulties may be anxious when interacting with peers. One-to-one or smaller group encounters in a familiar, cosy space can help a child to build confidence.

Sense of self

• Celebrate each child’s uniqueness by openly talking with them about their individual characteristics and their similarities and differences with others in a positive way.
• Value difference through showing genuine  interest in and valuing all children’s contributions through listening carefully and providing opportunities for children to be fully themselves.
• Offer extra support to children in new situations or when they are feeling anxious or insecure.
• Talk to children about choices they make and help them understand that this may mean that they cannot do something else.
• Show trust in young children’s abilities by showing them how to use and care for materials, letting them try and noticing when they need help; offering but not taking over.
• Be aware of and respond to the particular needs of children who are learning English as an additional language.
• Engage with children in exploring and talking about what they are doing, valuing their ideas and ways of doing things.
• Offer help with activities when asked but not before and see struggle and mistakes as important parts of learning.
• Intervene when children need help and validation of feelings in difficult situations, such as prejudice or unkindness.
• Use books, stories and Persona Dolls to engage children in thinking about difference, unfairness, prejudice and discrimination.
• Notice and appreciate young children’s efforts not just their achievements, encouraging their inner motivation rather than working just for your approval or a sticker.
• Listen carefully to young children. Take their ideas and opinions into account and involve them in making decisions about daily events.
• Young children with disabilities or learning difficulties may need additional support in making choices and decisions and being autonomous.

Understanding emotions

• Create a listening culture and atmosphere which is calm and caring, where young children feel able to express their emotions
• Model caring responses and comforting or helping behaviours in your interactions with all children.
• Name and talk about a wide range of feelings and make it clear that all feelings are understandable and acceptable. Put children’s feelings into words for them: It looks like you’re cross about that.
• Model how you manage your own feelings, e.g. I’m feeling a bit angry and I need to calm down, so I’m going to…
• Help children to recognise when their actions hurt others.  Do not expect children to say sorry before they have a real understanding of what this means. Instead help them to suggest solutions to a conflict when they are emotionally ready.
• Be emotionally available to young children when they need to “emotionally refuel” to help them to cope with difficult situations, conflict and difficult emotions.
• Ask children for their ideas on what might make people feel better when they are sad or cross.
• Children with developmental differences such as Autism Spectrum Disorders may need additional support in developing empathy. Using role play opportunities, social stories and providing feedback can help a child to recognise their feelings of empathy
• Provide clear boundaries without being inflexible.
• Discuss rules and fairness with young children and show positive appreciation of young children’s pro-social behaviours of kindness and helpfulness for example.
• Support children in recognising the consequences of behaviours and responses that make other children or adults feel upset and help them to repair this by finding new responses or behaviours.
• Actively listen to children’s talk, play, body language and behaviours and think about what the child is telling you.
• Make opportunities for children and adults to listen to each other and explain their thinking, feelings and actions as far as they are able.
• Collaborate with children in creating rules and expectations within a group such as mutual respect, compromise, caring behaviours towards themselves, others and the environment.
• Adopt a partnership approach with parents when discussing boundaries and expectations to maintain continuity for children.

Listening and attention

• Engage in role play and imaginary play scenarios and  model listening behaviours.
• Encourage children to listen to their friends and take turns in play and activities.
• Make mistakes when telling stories/singing songs so the children correct you.
• Cue children, particularly those with communication difficulties, to listen by first using their name, and signal a change of conversation, e.g. Now we are going to talk about…
• Share rhymes, books and stories from many cultures, sometimes using languages other than English, particularly where children are learning English as an additional language.
• Invite parents and members of wider communities to story-telling opportunities, so children can use their full language repertoire. Children then hear a range of languages, and the value of home languages as well as English.
• Introduce “rhyme time” bags containing books that are relevant to the communities of your setting.  Encourage taking these home, and involve parents in rhymes and singing games.
• Ask parents to record and share songs and rhymes that have meaning to them, their family and community.
• Choose stories with repeated refrains, dances and action songs involving looking and pointing, and songs that require replies and turn-taking.
• Plan regular short periods when individuals listen to others, such as singing a short song, sharing an experience or describing something they have seen or done.
• Play games which involve listening for a signal, such as Simon Says, and use Ready, steady…go!
• Use opportunities to stop and listen carefully for environmental sounds, and talk about sounds you can hear using words such as long, short, high, low.
• Play with sand timers to help extend concentration for children who find it difficult to focus their attention on a task.
• Explain why it is important to pay attention by looking and listening when others are speaking.
• Give children opportunities both to speak and to listen, ensuring that the needs of children learning English as an additional language are met, so that they can participate fully starting with simple actions and gestures, progressing to single words and phrases, and then to using more complex sentences.

Understanding

• Prompt children’s thinking and discussion through involvement in their play.
• Talk to children about what they have been doing and help them to reflect upon and explain events, e.g. You told me this model was going to be a tractor. What’s this lever for?
• When you need to give children directions be clear and help them to deal with those involving more than one action, e.g. Time to come and wash your hands and then we’ll set the table for lunch.
• When introducing a new activity, use mime and gesture to support language development.
• Showing and talking about a photograph of an activity such as hand washing can help to reinforce understanding.
• Make playful “silly mistakes” deliberately to prompt reaction and allow children to explore being the “expert”.
• Be aware that some children may watch another child in order to know what to do, rather than understanding what you’ve said themselves.
• Embed sustained shared thinking approaches to extend language and conversational moments to help increase the child’s awareness and understanding of speech.

Speaking

• Wait and allow the child time to start the conversation.
• Follow the child’s lead to talk about what they are interested in.
• Give children thinking time.  Wait for them to think about what they want to say and put their thoughts into words, without jumping in too soon to say something yourself.
• In conversations and playful encounters with children, model language a step beyond the child’s language use. 
• Use the child’s voicing/speech attempts to lead play and encounters.
• For children learning English as an additional language, value non-verbal communications and those offered in home languages.
• Without comment, observe and then mirror a child’s interesting movement or series of movements. This might lead to a nonverbal “serve and return” movement dialogue, with the child leading the “conversation”.  This can be very powerful with reluctant speakers or children not yet ready to use English.
• Add words to what children say, e.g. child says Brush dolly hair, you say Yes, Lucy is brushing dolly’s hair.
• Talk with children to make links between their body language and words, e.g. Your face does look cross. Has something upset you?
• Introduce new words in the context of play and activities.
• Use a lot of statements and comments and fewer questions to build natural conversation.  When you do ask a question, use an open question with many possible answers.
• Show interest in the words children use to communicate and describe their experiences.
• Expand on what children say by repeating it and adding a few more words, helping children use more complex sentences.
• Use lively intonation and animated expression when speaking with children and reading texts.
• Talk to the child about family life, stories from home.  Involve families in this.

Moving and handling

• Encourage children to move with controlled effort, and model use of vocabulary in context such as strong, firm, gentle, heavy, stretch, reach, tense and floppy.
• Use music of different tempo, styles and cultures to create moods and talk about how people move when they are sad, happy or cross.
• Motivate children to be active through group games, action songs and singing.
• Talk about why children should take care when moving freely. Notice children who frequently bump into obstacles or fall over and talk with parents/carers about how they move at home.
• Teach children the skills they need to use equipment safely, e.g. cutting with scissors or using tools. Be aware of children who may not have had these experiences at home and talk with parents/carers about increasing opportunities at home.
• Encourage children to use the vocabulary of movement, e.g. gallop, slither; of instruction e.g. follow, lead and copy by modelling and using the vocabulary in context.
• Pose challenging questions such as Can you get all the way round the climbing frame without your knees touching it?
• Talk with children about the need to match their actions to the space they are in.
• Show children how to collaborate in throwing, rolling, fetching and receiving games, encouraging children to play with one another once their skills are sufficient.
• Introduce and encourage children to use the vocabulary of manipulation, e.g. squeeze and prod’
• Explain why safety is an important factor in handling tools, equipment and materials, and have sensible rules for everybody to follow.
• Value and support children’s own judgements of risk, encouraging them to think about what to be aware of and how they can stay safe.
• Explain benefits of outdoor learning to parents/carers so that children come dressed appropriately for different weathers and seasons.
• Notice a child who moves repetitively in a particular way e.g. spinning around, flapping hands or using a throwing action. Talk to parents/carers about schemas and find constructive ways for the child to move safely.  These kinds of movements may require investigation in the future if they continue.
• Notice a child who lacks strength in limbs to push, pull or move safely over climbing equipment. Find out what opportunities the child has at home for outdoor adventure and risk and adapt routines to increase outdoor physical play.

Health and self-care

• Talk with children about why you encourage them to rest when they are tired or why they need to wear wellingtons when it is muddy outdoors.
• Encourage children to notice the changes in their bodies after exercise, such as their heart beating faster.
• Talk with children about the importance of hand-washing and infection control.
• Help children who are struggling with self-care by leaving a last small step for them to complete, e.g. pulling up their trousers from just below the waist.
• Do up zips on coats etc from behind and over child’s shoulder so they can view the process from their perspective.
• Use social stories to support a child who is struggling to understand a new routine.
• Notice when a child is always hungry, takes food from others or needs more food than their peers. This may be an indicator of dietary imbalance, an emotional or safeguarding need. Talk with parents/carers to find out eating patterns at home.
• Notice when a child is often tired or sleepy during the day and find out from parents/carers how they are sleeping at night.
• Notice when a child holds their breath to control the reactions of others. Talk with the child and parents/carers to encourage the child to express emotion in other ways.
• Notice children who are unable to mirror the actions of others. Further support may be needed to activate mirror neurons in the brain.
• Maintain an open dialogue with parents/carers about a child’s bowel and bladder control. Offer advice, support and reassurance. Make a referral to health and family support if needed

Reading

• Discuss with children the characters and events in books being read to them.
• Encourage children to predict outcomes, to think of alternative endings and to compare story plots and the feelings of characters with their own experiences.
• Focus on meaningful print (such as a child’s name, words on a cereal packet or a book title, icons on a weather app) in order to discuss similarities and differences between symbols.
• Help children to understand what a word is by using names and labels and by pointing out words in the environment and in print and digital books.
• Remember not all languages have written forms and not all families speak English at home, or are literate in their home language.
• Include home language and bilingual story sessions by involving qualified bilingual adults, as well as enlisting the help of parents.
• Read dual language books (English and another language) with all children, to raise awareness of different scripts. Try to match dual language books to languages spoken by families in the setting.
• Remember that established literacy practices in homes might differ from those of the setting.

Writing

• Notice and encourage children’s drawing, painting and early writing and the meanings that they give to them, such as when a child covers a whole piece of paper and says, “I’m writing”.
• Celebrate and value children’s early attempts at graphic representation – focusing on the meaning and content rather than letter formation.
• Model and include children in using signs and writing to expand playful experiences such as making signs for a shop or car wash, instructions for a ball game, a list of names for a taking turns.
• Support children in recognising and writing their own names.
• Make paper and digital books with children of activities they have been doing, using photographs of them as illustrations.

Comparison

• Encourage children to share items between two people or toys.

Counting

• Capitalise on children’s fascination with counting  by joining in when they count in games.
• Enjoy counting forwards and back (sometimes to much higher numbers). Use different voices, e.g. high or growly.
• Use opportunities within daily routines to support children’s developing sense of number.
• Model and encourage counting and representing numbers within role play, e.g. making a telephone call using a list of numbers.
• Value children’s own mathematical representations within their pretend play.

Cardinality

• When counting with children, playfully make deliberate mistakes for fun, expecting children to correct them.
• Model writing numerals, e.g. on badges, birthday cards and banners.
• When counting objects with children emphasise the cardinal principle: 1, 2, 3, there are three cups.
• Invite children to count out a number of things from a larger group, e.g. Can you get five crackers?
• Encourage children to use their fingers to show an amount  e.g. when asking another child to share resources, to show on their fingers how many they need.
• Emphasise the one more, one less pattern in rhymes and traditional tales, asking children to predict the next number.
• Model wondering and talking about how you might solve a number problem.
• Value and support children to use their own graphics when problem solving.

Spatial Awareness

• When children are exploring, use the language of position and direction in context (in, on, inside, under, over, progressing to between, beside, next to  through, along, including relative terms which depend on where you are, e.g. behind, in front of, forwards, backwards) using equivalent terms for these in home languages through liaison with families where possible.
• On walks, in pictures or while playing, point out how things or people that are far away look smaller.
• Support children in their problem solving when they are creating rail tracks and road layouts. 
• In block play, sensitively support and challenge experienced builders to make bridges and enclosures.
• Encourage children to persevere with jigsaws, perhaps demonstrating “hovering” jigsaw pieces to check if they will fit.

Shape

• Help children to choose shapes for a purpose, e.g. a triangular block for a roof and the wedge-shaped block for a ramp.
• Offer an appropriate or inappropriate shape for what you think the child’s purpose might be to investigate their thinking.
• As children experience shapes, use informal language (e.g. slanty, pointy, twisty, wiggly, bumpy), common shape names (e.g. cylinder, cone, circle, square) and “nearly” shapes (e.g. This is almost a square but it’s got curvy corners). Find out and use equivalent terms for shapes in home languages.
• Discuss how shapes can be partitioned in everyday contexts, e.g. cutting food in different ways.
• Value children’s constructions and solutions to problems they have set themselves and talk about how the shapes have combined to make new shapes.

Pattern

• Whilst playing alongside children, model simple repeating patterns of two or three items and encourage children to create and continue patterns.
• Demonstrate arranging objects in spatial patterns when building, collaging or playing with loose parts.
• Draw children’s attention to patterns around them including from a range of cultures.
• When making patterns, help children to solve problems.

Measures

• During play, model comparing lengths and distances.
• Look out for meaningful opportunities for children to compare by length, weight, capacity and time using comparative language (longer/shorter, heavier/lighter, holds more/holds less, longer time/shorter time).
• Encourage children to participate in seesaw and balance scale play.
• Encourage children to respond to and use words such as before, after, soon or later when talking about routines, recent events and events in a story or rhyme.

People and communities

• Encourage children to talk about their own home and community life, and to find out about other children’s experiences. Be aware that some children’s home lives may be complicated or disrupted, and talking about them may be difficult.
• Ensure that children learning English as an additional language have opportunities to express themselves in their home language some of the time.
• Encourage children to develop positive relationships with community members who visit the setting, such as fire fighters, refuse collectors, delivery personnel, care home resident, artists.
• Share stories about people from the past who have an influence on the present

The world

• Use parents’ knowledge  to extend children’s experiences of the world
• Support children with sensory impairment by providing supplementary experience and information to enhance their learning about the world around them.
• Arouse awareness of features of the environment in the setting and immediate local area, e.g. make visits to shops or a park.
• Use conversation with children to extend their vocabulary to help them talk about their observations and to ask questions.
• Ensure adults know and use the widest vocabulary that they can, e.g. using the correct name for a plant or geographical feature.

Technology

• Support and extend the skills children develop as they become familiar with simple equipment, such as twisting or turning a knob.
• Draw young children’s attention to pieces of digital apparatus they see or that they use with adult supervision.
• Talk to children about their uses of technologies at home and in other environments to begin to understand what they already know about and can do with different technologies.
• Ask open-ended questions and have conversations about children’s interest in technological toys to enable children to learn about different technologies.
• Support children to be curious in grappling with cause and effect, e.g. learning that pulling a string may make a puppet arm lift.

Creating with materials

• Support children’s talk by sharing terms used by artists, potters, musicians, dancers, e.g. as children show interest in exploring colour mixing, support them in using terms such as tint, shade, hue.
• When children have a strong intention in mind, support them in thinking about what they want to create, the processes that may be involved and the materials and resources they might need.
• Encourage children to notice changes in properties of media as they are transformed, e.g. through becoming wet, dry, flaky or fixed. Talk about what is happening, helping them to think about cause and effect.
• Observe, analyse and document the processes involved in a child’s creative and expressive processes, to support greater understanding, inform planning and share with families, carers, and other professionals.
• Encourage children to notice changes in movement and sound, e.g. louder, quieter, smaller, bigger. Talk about what is happening, helping them to think about cause and effect.
• Introduce new skills and techniques based on your observations and knowledge of children’s interests and skills.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Ensure children have opportunities to experience the world outside the setting, e.g. through walks, visits, visitors, links with children’s homes.
• Support children’s development of imaginary worlds by encouraging new experiences, inventiveness, empathy and new possibilities.
• Share a diverse range of text, image-based and oral stories to stimulate imaginative responses.
• Co-create stories with children based on their ideas, experiences and the people and places they know well or imaginary ones.

Making relationships

• Provide stability in staffing, key person relationships and in grouping of the children.
• Plan opportunities for children to spend time with their key person, individually and in small groups.
• Create opportunities for children to get to know everyone in the group.
• Plan the environment to create spaces for children to play alone, alongside or with others as they choose.
• Provide time, space and open-ended materials for children to collaborate with one another in different ways, for example, in block play.
• Provide play activities that encourage cooperation and collaboration, such as parachute activities and ring games.
• Choose books, puppets, dolls and small world play that help children explore their ideas about friends and friendship and to talk about feelings, e.g. someone saying You can’t play’
• For young children who are finding it hard to make relationships in the group, develop other situations such as a forest school activity or a creative arts project that may be more encouraging.

Sense of self

• Involve parents in their children’s learning and learn about each child’s home culture from them.
• Plan regular opportunities for children to talk to their small group about something they are interested in or have done.
• Include mirrors and photographs of the children and their families and friends in the environment.
• Reflect children’s socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds and those of the wider community in the environment, play opportunities and resources.
• Give time for children to pursue their play and learning without interruption, to complete activities such as role play, construction, building dens and painting to their satisfaction, and to return to their activities if they wish.
• Provide experiences and activities that are challenging but achievable.
• Provide a role-play area resourced with materials reflecting children’s family lives and communities. Consider including resources reflecting lives that are unfamiliar, to broaden children’s knowledge and reflect an inclusive ethos.
• Involve children in drawing or taking photographs of favourite activities or places, to help them describe their individual preferences and opinions.
• Provide books, stories, songs, music and other cultural artefacts that are drawn from a wide range of traditions and styles.
• Provide and engage with CPD to extend practitioner’s awareness of anti-bias practice.

Understanding emotions

• Plan small group circle times when children can explore feelings, e.g. through stories.
• Create familiar, predictable routines, including opportunities to help in appropriate tasks, e.g. setting the table or putting away toys.
• Display a sequence of photographs to show the routines in the setting to support younger or new children and children with additional needs.
• Provide photographs and books where emotions are being expressed to look at and talk about with children.
• Use Persona Dolls to help children consider feelings, ways to help others feel better, and ways to manage conflicting opinions, be fair and get on with each other.
• Provide a range of music, stories, open ended materials and play opportunities, play props and resources to support young children in exploring and making sense of feelings such as fear, anxiety and anger.
• Offer environments that include stimulating and challenging spaces but also calm and comfortable spaces.
• Set, explain and maintain clear, reasonable and consistent boundaries so that children can feel safe and secure in their play and other activities.
• Use pictures, shared gestures or sign language to show young children and those with additional needs the expected behaviours.
• Involve children in agreeing codes of behaviour and taking responsibility for implementing them.
• Provide books with stories about characters that follow or break rules, and the effects of their behaviour on others.
• Carefully prepare all children for any changes to their routine, particularly those with a SEN such as autism.
• Have agreed procedures outlining how to respond to unexpected or unusual  changes in children’s behaviour.
• Share policies and practice on safeguarding procedure with parents/carers from the outset.
• Provide and engage in CPD that supports practitioners understanding and response to children’s emotional difficulties and safeguarding concerns.

Listening and attention

• When making up alliterative jingles, draw attention to the similarities in sounds at the beginning of words and emphasise the initial sound, e.g. mmmmummy,   shshshshadow, K-K-K-KKaty.
• Plan activities listening carefully to different speech sounds, e.g. a sound chain copying the voice sound around the circle, or identifying other children’s voices on tape.
• When singing or saying rhymes, talk about the similarities in the rhyming words. Make up alternative endings and encourage children to supply the last word of the second line, e.g. Hickory Dickory bee, The mouse ran down the...
• Set up a listening area or other opportunities where children can enjoy rhymes and stories. either independently or with an adult.
• Provide instruments for musical play.
• Provide opportunities to listen in different kinds of environments e.g. outdoor spaces, dens, large and small rooms and buildings
• Explore different kinds of surfaces and how noise bounces off them,
• Talk with children about how we listen differently to different things, for example animals and types of music.

Understanding

• Set up shared experiences that children can reflect upon, e.g. visits, cooking, or stories that can be re-enacted.
• Help children to predict and order events coherently, by providing props and materials that encourage children to re-enact, using talk and action
• Find out from parents how children make themselves understood at home; confirm which their preferred language other modes of communication are.
• Tune into children’s preferred modes of communication – perhaps direct questions feel confronting but shared making or an exchange of funny expressions or gestures creates a connection more effectively.
• Provide practical experiences that encourage children to ask and respond to questions, e.g. explaining pulleys or wet and dry sand.
• Alongside books, introduce story props, such as pictures, puppets and objects, to encourage children to retell stories and to think about how the characters feel.
• Displays can connect experiences across places or provide reminders of previous trips, events or seasons, for example.
• Set up displays that are interactive so children can touch, pick up etc and talk about/reflect on their experiences
• Provide for, initiate and join in imaginative play and role-play or real life storytelling encouraging children to talk about what is happening and to act out the scenarios in character.

Speaking

• Display pictures and photographs showing engaging, familiar or fantastical events, objects and activities and talk about them with the children.
• Provide activities which help children to learn to distinguish differences in sounds, word patterns and rhythms.
• Plan to encourage correct use of language by telling repetitive stories, and playing games which involve repetition of words or phrases.
• Provide opportunities for children to communicate in their home language.
• Help children to build their vocabulary, motivations and opportunities to experiment with talk by extending the range of their experiences. Understand  that often when an experience is unfamiliar, children might fall silent at first but choose to talk about it later.
• Foster children’s enjoyment of spoken and written language by providing interesting and stimulating play opportunities in which there is little pressure to talk but words, songs and rhymes are welcome.
• Continue to encourage movement activity to stimulate sound and verbal utterances as well as the opportunity to explore expressive sounds and words to match movement, particularly outdoors.
• Stimulating the vestibular system through age-appropriate swinging, spinning, sliding, swaying etc. may help reluctant speakers to use voice.
• Plan regular opportunities for children to speak, e.g. take turns having a toy animal at home, and then telling about the visit.
• Set up collaborative tasks, e.g. construction, food activities or story-making through role-play.
• Provide small world toys or puppets for children to act out familiar stories in their play.

Moving and handling

• Provide time and space to enjoy energetic play outdoors daily.
• Provide large portable equipment that children can move about safely and cooperatively to create their own structures, such as milk crates, tyres, large cardboard tubes.
• Practise movement skills through games with beanbags, cones, balls and hoops.
• Plan activities where children can practise moving in different ways and at different speeds, balancing, target throwing, rolling, kicking and catching
• Provide sufficient equipment for children to share, so that waiting to take turns does not spoil enjoyment.
• Mark out boundaries for some activities, such as games involving wheeled toys or balls, so that children can more easily regulate their own activities.
• Provide activities that give children the opportunity and motivation to practise manipulative skills, e.g. cooking, painting, clay and playing instruments.
• Provide play resources including small-world toys, construction sets, threading and posting toys, dolls’ clothes and material for collage.
• Teach children skills of how to use tools and materials effectively and safely and give them opportunities to practise them.
• Provide a range of left-handed tools, especially left-handed scissors, as needed.
• Support children with physical difficulties with nonslip mats, small trays for equipment, and triangular or thicker writing tools.
• Provide a range of construction toys of different sizes, made of wood, rubber or plastic, that fix together in a variety of ways, e.g. by twisting, pushing, slotting or magnetism.
• Provide access to waterproofs, wellington boots and a changing area where children can dress/undress independently.
• Provide equipment that supports different kinds of schemas, so that children have an opportunity to build on natural patterns of movement.
• Agree acceptable levels of risk and challenge, identify hazards and actions needed to maximise opportunities indoors and outdoors.
• Adapt or create spaces to ensure that children with limited physical mobility can move safely and with confidence.
• Teach children how to access, use and store resources safely to build independence and autonomy.
• Provide materials to create enclosed spaces and dens such as fabric, poles and pegs.

Health and self-care

• Provide a cosy place with a cushion and a soft light where a child can rest quietly if they need to.
• Plan so that children can be active in a range of ways, including while using a wheelchair.
• Encourage children to be active and energetic by organising lively games, since physical activity is important in maintaining good health and in guarding against children becoming overweight or obese in later life.
• Remove obstacles and furniture that could restrict mobility. Ensure accessibility especially for children with a physical disability.
• Use visual support to sequence routines such as toileting, handwashing and dressing.
• Establish regular routines for eating, drinking, washing and toileting so that children become familiar with the rhythm of the day
• Consider accessibility of resources and make sure all children are able to make choices about what they can use and what they want to do.
• Use a visual timetable to support children’s understanding of routines during the day.
• Consider opportunities to move up, down and through spaces and equipment.
• Use mirrors, reflective materials and a range of multi-sensory materials to stimulate curiosity and active investigation.
• Ensure indoor/outdoor areas are fully accessible to all children, making reasonable adjustments to layout, organisation and resources to meet individual needs safely.

Reading

• Provide some simple poetry, song, fiction and non-fiction books, both paper copies and digital.
• Provide fact and fiction books and possibly ebooks that children can access independently in all areas, e.g. construction area as well as the book area.
• Provide books containing photographs that children can share with adults, peers and read on their own.
• Add child-made books and adult-scribed children’s stories to the book area and share these stories with others.
• Provide multimodal texts (that blend alphabetic print, images and symbols) that reflect the literacy practices that children encounter in their home and community spaces, enabling children to connect and draw on different aspects of their emerging literacy experiences.
• Provide a range of reading materials that both enable children to draw on their home and community experiences and introduce children to a new and diverse range of texts, genre and media.
• Ensure children can see written text, e.g. use big books, and model the language of print, such as letter, word, page, beginning, end, first, last, middle.
• Provide a range of resources in play areas, such as empty cereal packets, labels and signs that children become familiar with and include in their play.
• Introduce children to books and other materials that provide information or instructions. Carry out activities using instructions, such as reading a recipe to make a cake or following safety procedures.
• Furnish the setting with diverse resources that reflect children’s home cultures and the diversity of cultures in the local community, including dual language books, as well as artefacts that children are attached to, such as special objects, sounds, images, as well as animals and insects.
• Take storytelling into local communities as a way to build connections between the setting and children’s homes and wider lives in the local community.

Writing

• Write down things children say to support their developing understanding that what they say can be written down, and then read and understood by someone else. Encourage parents to do this as well.
• Set up environments of offices, dens in the garden, library, shop, home corner with greetings cards, etc., so that children engage in literacy events in which they spontaneously participate.
• Provide a range of accessible materials and tools for writing as part of everyday play activity, including role play, both indoors and outdoors.
• Write poems and short stories together with the children, writing down ideas they suggest.
• Scribe children’s stories and re-read and enact their stories in small group activities.
• Involve children when you make lists or write notes and messages.
• Think out loud and talk through what you are doing when writing on typing on screen.
• Break down your flow of speech into individual words, exemplifying the correspondence between the spoken and written word.
• Provide activities during which children can experiment with writing, for example, leaving a message.
• Encourage children to use their phonic knowledge when writing, and model this in your own writing.

Comparison/ Counting

• Provide a numeral rich environment, e.g. in role-play areas, mud-kitchen recipes, numbers on trikes and toilet doors.
• Provide numerals that children can pick up and use within all aspects of their play.
• Provide resources indoors and outside for children to explore and talk about higher numbers. 
• Model using objects to illustrate counting songs, rhymes and number stories, sometimes using pictures and numerals, to enable children to use those resources independently.
• Play with either dot or numeral dice. Discuss that six on the dice is worth more than four.
• Provide a variety of mathematical picture books and share them as part of “warm and cuddly” maths times.
• Explore different arrangements of the same number, e.g. partitioning five in different ways; hiding one group and “guessing” the hidden number.

Cardinality

• Model counting items rhythmically, including objects into a container, claps or drumbeats.
• Support children to choose how to arrange collections of two, three and four objects in different ways.
• Provide spaces to display children’s ongoing mathematical thinking, e.g. their own ways of representing their thinking, and scribing children’s words.

Spatial Awareness

• Provide spaces to display children’s ongoing mathematical thinking, e.g. their own ways of representing their thinking and scribing children’s words.
• Provide opportunities for children to explore position themselves inside, behind, on top and so on.
• Provide picture books to stimulate discussion about position and direction.
• Create trails and treasure hunts with the children.
• Organise the indoor and outdoor environment with outlines for objects or specific places for children to tidy up items by fitting them into the designated space.

Shape

• Provide differently shaped resources to handle, carry, move and explore.
• Provide large and small blocks and boxes for construction both indoors and outdoors.

Pattern

• Provide a range of items for free exploration of patterning indoors and outdoors including natural materials, pattern blocks, loose parts, mats, trays and strips.
• Encourage children to join in with body patterns or repeating sections of songs.
• Pause to encourage prediction when enjoying stories and rhymes with repeating elements, sometimes using props.
• Emphasise the repeating pattern when turn taking.
• Provide patterned resources including those representing a range of cultures, such as clothing, fabrics or wrapping paper.

Measures

• Provide problem-solving opportunities indoors and outdoors for comparing length, weight and capacity, e.g. Which is the best bottle so we’ll have enough drink for everyone at the picnic?
• Ask children to predict What happens next? using visual timetables, books and stories.
• Provide items that can be ordered by size, such as plates and clothes in role play.

People and communities

• Plan extra time for helping children in transition, such as when they move from one setting to another or between different groups in the same setting.
• Provide activities and opportunities for children to share experiences and knowledge from different parts of their lives with each other.
• Provide ways of preserving memories of special events, e.g. making a book, collecting photographs, sound or video 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.
• Ensure the use of up-to-date, appropriate photographs of parts of the world that are commonly stereotyped and misrepresented.
• Help children to learn positive attitudes and challenge negative attitudes and stereotypes, e.g. using puppets, Persona Dolls, stories and books showing black heroes or disabled kings or queens or families with same sex parents, having a visit from a male midwife or female fire fighter.
• Visit different parts of the local community, including areas where some children may be very knowledgeable, e.g. Chinese supermarket, local church, elders lunch club, Greek café.
• Provide role-play areas with a variety of resources reflecting diversity.
• Make a display with the children, showing all the people who make up the community of the setting.
• Share stories that reflect the diversity of children’s experiences.
• Invite people from a range of cultural backgrounds to talk about aspects of their lives or the things they do in their work, such as a volunteer who helps people become familiar with the local area.

The world

• Use the local area for exploring both the built and the natural environment. Regularly take small groups of children on local walks, taking the time to observe what involves the children’s interest.
• Provide opportunities to observe things closely through a variety of means, e.g. magnifiers and photographs, phone apps to listen to and recognise birds.
• Explore different habitats outdoors, e.g. scent, colour and shape of flowers attracting bees, making a wormery, planning bird feeding on the ground and higher level.
• Provide play maps and small world equipment for children to create their own environments as well as represent the familiar environment.
• Teach skills and knowledge in the context of practical activities, e.g. learning about the characteristics of liquids and solids by involving children in melting chocolate or cooking eggs, or observing ice outdoors.
• Share stories related to pollution, climate change, habitat erosion, etc.

Technology

• 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.
• When in the community and on trips to places such as the park, encourage children to take photographs and use mobile apps of things that interest them, ready to revisit later.
• Provide a range of materials that enable children to explore cause and effect.

Creating with materials

• Offer resources for mixing colours, joining things together and combining materials, supporting where appropriate.
• Create a place where work in progress can be kept safely.
• Share with children other artists’ work that connects with their ideas, interests and experiences.
• Introduce children to a wide range of music, movement, painting and sculpture.
• Provide a range of musical instruments that are used in different ways, for children to bang, pluck, blow, strum.
• Offer children opportunities to use their skills and explore concepts and ideas through their representations.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Tell stories based on children’s experiences and the people and places they know well as well as stories that stimulate the imagination.
• Create spaces for children to respond to stories and their representing their ideas of what they hear, imagine and enjoy through a variety of art forms and materials.
• Offer children a wide variety of materials and resources, both inside and outside that stimulate their imagination to build, to become, to represent and experiment with their imaginative play and thinking.

Making relationships

• Represents and recreates what they have learnt about social interactions from their relationships with close adults, in their play and relationships with others.
• Develops particular friendships with other children, which help them to understand different points of view and to challenge their own and others’ thinking. 
• Is increasingly flexible and cooperative as they are more able to understand other people’s needs, wants and behaviours.
• Is increasingly socially skilled and will take steps to resolve conflicts with other children by negotiating and finding a compromise; sometimes by themselves, sometimes with support
• Returns to the secure base of a familiar adult to recharge and gain emotional support and practical help in difficult situations. 
• Is proactive in seeking adult support and able to articulate their wants and needs.
• Some children may have had to make many different relationships in their life.  This may have impacted on their understanding of what makes a consistent and stable relationship

Sense of self

• Recognises that they belong to different communities and social groups and communicates freely about own home and community
• Is more aware of their relationships to particular social groups and sensitive to prejudice and discrimination
• Shows confidence in speaking to others about their own needs, wants, interests and opinions in familiar group
• Can describe their competencies, what they can do well and are getting better at; describing themselves in positive but realistic terms
• Has a clear idea about what they want to do in their play and how they want to go about it
• Shows confidence in choosing resources and perseverance in carrying out a chosen activity

Understanding emotions

• Understands their own and other people’s feelings, offering empathy and comfort
• Talks about their own and others’ feelings and behaviour and its consequences
• Attempts to repair a relationship or situation where they have caused upset and understands how their actions impact other people
• Is more able to manage their feelings and tolerate situations in which their wishes cannot be met
• Seeks support, “emotional refuelling” and practical help in new or challenging situations.
• Is aware of behavioural expectations and sensitive to ideas of justice and fairness
• Seeks ways to manage conflict, for example through holding back, sharing, negotiation and compromise

Listening and attention

• Shows variability in listening behaviour; may move around and fiddle but still be listening or sit still but not absorbed by activity
• May indicate two-channelled attention, e.g. paying attention to something of interest for short or long periods; can both listen and do for short span

Understanding

• Understands a range of complex sentence structures including negatives, plurals and tense markers
• Beginning to understand humour, e.g. nonsense rhymes, jokes
• Able to follow a story without pictures or props
• Listens and responds to ideas expressed by others in conversation or discussion
• Understands questions such as who; why; when; where and how

Speaking

• Extends vocabulary, especially by grouping and naming, exploring the meaning and sounds of new words
• Uses language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences in play situations
• Links statements and sticks to a main theme or intention
• Uses talk to organise, sequence and clarify thinking, ideas, feelings and events
• Introduces a storyline or narrative into their play

Moving and handling

• Chooses to move in a range of ways, moving freely and with confidence making changes to body shape, position and pace of movement such as slithering, shuffling, rolling, crawling, walking, running, jumping, skipping, sliding and hopping
• Experiments with different ways of moving, testing out ideas and adapting movements to reduce risk
• Jumps off an object and lands appropriately using hands, arms and body to stabilise and balance
• Negotiates space successfully when playing racing and chasing games with other children, adjusting speed or changing direction to avoid obstacles
• Travels with confidence and skill around, under, over and through balancing and climbing equipment
• Shows increasing control over an object in pushing, patting, throwing, catching or kicking it
• Uses simple tools to effect changes to materials
• Handles tools, objects, construction and malleable materials safely and with increasing control and intention
• Shows a preference for a dominant hand
• Begins to use anticlockwise movement and retrace vertical lines
• Begins to form recognisable letters independently
• Uses a pencil and holds it effectively to form recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed

Health and self-care

• Eats a healthy range of foodstuffs and understands need for variety in food
• Describes a range of different food textures and tastes when cooking and notices changes when they are combined or exposed to hot and cold temperatures
• Describes physical changes to the body that can occur when feeling unwell, anxious, tired, angry or sad
• Can initiate and describe playful actions or movements for other children to mirror and follow
• Has established a consistent, daily pattern in relation to eating, toileting and sleeping routines and can explain why this is important
• Usually dry and clean during the day
• Shows some understanding that good practices with regard to exercise, eating, drinking water, sleeping and hygiene can contribute to good health
• Shows understanding of the need for safety when tackling new challenges, and considers and manages some risks by taking independent action or by giving a verbal warning to others
• Shows understanding of how to transport and store equipment safely
• Practices some appropriate safety measures without direct supervision, considering both benefits and risk of a physical experience

Reading

• Enjoys an increasing range of print and digital books, both fiction and non-fiction
• Uses vocabulary and forms of speech that are increasingly influenced by their experiences of reading
• Describes main story settings, events and principal characters in increasing detail
• Re-enacts and reinvents stories they have heard in their play
• Knows that information can be retrieved from books, computers and mobile digital devices
• Is able to recall and discuss stories or information that has been read to them, or they have read themselves
• Begins to recognise some written names of peers, siblings or “Mummy”/”Daddy” for example
• Begins to develop phonological and phonemic awareness
  • Continues a rhyming string and identifies alliteration
  • Hears and says the initial sound in words
  • Begins to segment the sounds in simple words and blend them together and knows which letters represent some of them
  • Starts to link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet
  • Begins to link sounds to some frequently used digraphs, e.g. sh, th, ee
• Begins to read some high frequency words, and to use developing knowledge of letters and sounds to read simple phonically decodable words and simple sentences
• Engages with books and other reading materials at an increasingly deeper level, sometimes drawing on their phonic knowledge to decode words, and their knowledge of language structure, subject knowledge and illustrations to interpret the text
• Includes everyday literacy artefacts in play, such as labels, instructions, signs, envelopes, etc

Writing

• Enjoys creating texts to communicate meaning for an increasingly wide range of  purposes, such as making greetings cards, tickets, lists, invitations and creating their own stories and books with images and sometimes with words, in print and digital formats
• Gives meaning to the marks they make as they draw, write, paint and type using a keyboard or touch-screen technology
• Begins to break the flow of speech into words, to hear and say the initial sound in words and may start to segment the sounds in words and blend them together
• Starts to develop phonic knowledge by linking sounds to letters, naming and sounding some of the letters of the alphabet, identifying letters and writing recognisable letters in sequence, such as in their own name
• Uses their developing phonic knowledge to write things such as labels and captions, later progressing to simple sentences

Comparison

• Uses number names and symbols when comparing numbers, showing interest in large numbers
• Estimates of numbers of things, showing understanding of relative size

Counting

• Enjoys reciting numbers from 0 to 10 (and beyond) and back from 10 to 0
• Increasingly confident at putting numerals in order 0 to 10 (ordinality)

Cardinality

• Engages in subitising numbers to four and maybe five
• Counts out up to 10 objects from a larger group.
• Matches the numeral with a group of items to show how many there are (up to 10)

Composition

• Shows awareness that numbers are made up (composed) of smaller numbers, exploring partitioning in different ways with a wide range of objects
• Begins to conceptually subitise larger numbers by subitising smaller groups within the number, e.g. sees six raisins on a plate as three and three
• In practical activities, adds one and subtracts one with numbers to 10
• Begins to explore and work out mathematical problems, using signs and strategies of their own choice, including (when appropriate) standard numerals, tallies and  “+” or “-“

Spatial Awareness

• Uses spatial language, including following and giving directions, using relative terms and describing what they see from different viewpoints
• Investigates turning and flipping objects in order to make shapes fit and create models; predicting and visualising how they will look (spatial reasoning)
• May enjoy making simple maps of familiar and imaginative environments, with landmarks

Shape

• Uses informal language and analogies, (e.g. heart-shaped and hand-shaped leaves), as well as mathematical terms to describe shapes
• Enjoys composing and decomposing shapes, learning which shapes combine to make other shapes
• Uses own ideas to make models of increasing complexity, selecting blocks needed, solving problems and visualising what they will build

Pattern

• Spots patterns in the environment, beginning to identify the pattern “rule”
• Chooses familiar objects to create and recreate repeating patterns beyond AB patterns and begins to identify the unit of repeat

Measures

• Enjoys tackling problems involving prediction and discussion of comparisons of length, weight or capacity, paying attention to fairness and accuracy
• Becomes familiar with measuring tools in everyday experiences and play
• Is increasingly able to order and sequence events using everyday language related to time
• Beginning to experience measuring time with timers and calendars

People and communities

• Enjoys joining in with family customs and routines
• Talks about past and present events in their own life and in the lives of family members
• Knows that other children do not always enjoy the same things, and is sensitive to this
• Knows about similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities, cultures and traditions

The world

• Looks closely at similarities, differences, patterns and change in nature
• Knows about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things
• Talks about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another
• Makes observations of animals and plants and explains why some things occur, and talks about changes

Technology

• Completes a simple program on electronic devices
• Uses ICT hardware to interact with age-appropriate computer software
• Can create content such as a video recording, stories, and/or draw a picture on screen
• Develops digital literacy skills by being able to access, understand and interact with a range of technologies
• Can use the internet with adult supervision to find and retrieve information of interest to them

Creating with materials

• Begins to build a collection of songs and dances
• Makes music in a range of ways, e.g. plays with sounds creatively, plays along to the beat of the song they are singing or music they are listening to
• Uses their increasing knowledge and understanding of tools and materials to explore their interests and enquiries and develop their thinking
• Develops their own ideas through experimentation with diverse materials, e.g. light, projected image, loose parts, watercolours, powder paint, to express and communicate their discoveries and understanding.
• Expresses and communicates working theories, feelings and understandings using a range of art forms, e.g. movement, dance, drama, music and the visual arts

Being imaginative and expressive

• Creates representations of both imaginary and real-life ideas, events, people and objects
• Initiates new combinations of movements and gestures in order to express and respond to feelings, ideas and experiences
• Chooses particular movements, instruments/sounds, colours and materials for their own imaginative purposes
• Uses combinations of art forms, e.g. moving and singing, making and dramatic play, drawing and talking, constructing and mapping
• Responds imaginatively to art works and objects, e.g. this music sounds likes dinosaurs, that sculpture is squishy like this [child physically demonstrates], that peg looks like a mouth
• Introduces a storyline or narrative into their play
• Plays cooperatively as part of a group to create, develop and act out an imaginary idea or narrative

Making relationships

• Continue to provide children with a secure base for them to return to and to explore from by being available if needed.
• Offer a warm and consistent presence, spending time playing and being with children in 1:1 and small groups as well as in the whole group.
• Show that you keep children “in mind” by referring to things you have noticed in their play or something that reminded you of them in some way.
• Model key skills of empathy, negotiation, compromise and positive assertion when playing with children and in your everyday interactions.
• Provide positive feedback during play, noticing and acknowledging children’s thoughtfulness towards each other.
• Support young children’s efforts to join in with others’ play and inviting others into their play.
• Use different resources such as social stories and Persona Dolls to help children to develop strategies for building and maintaining relationships.
• Offer calm and considered support for children as they experiences conflict with their peers. Use a problem-solving approach, e.g. You are fighting because you both want the blue bike, what can we do about this?
• Pause before intervening in children’s arguments to allow children time resolve issues if they can
• Recognise and respect children’s particular friendships
• Notice and celebrate young children’s valuable contributions to their relationships with others, e.g. to younger children, new children or new practitioners.
• Shy children or some with social and emotional difficulties may be anxious when interacting with peers. One-to-one or smaller group encounters in a familiar, cosy space can help a child to build confidence.

Sense of self

• Celebrate each child’s uniqueness by openly talking with them about their individual characteristics and their similarities and differences with others in a positive way.
• Value difference through showing genuine  interest in and valuing all children’s contributions through listening carefully and providing opportunities for children to be fully themselves.
• Offer extra support to children in new situations or when they are feeling anxious or insecure.
• Talk to children about choices they make and help them understand that this may mean that they cannot do something else.
• Show trust in young children’s abilities by showing them how to use and care for materials, letting them try and noticing when they need help; offering but not taking over.
• Be aware of and respond to the particular needs of children who are learning English as an additional language.
• Engage with children in exploring and talking about what they are doing, valuing their ideas and ways of doing things.
• Offer help with activities when asked but not before and see struggle and mistakes as important parts of learning.
• Intervene when children need help and validation of feelings in difficult situations, such as prejudice or unkindness.
• Use books, stories and Persona Dolls to engage children in thinking about difference, unfairness, prejudice and discrimination.
• Notice and appreciate young children’s efforts not just their achievements, encouraging their inner motivation rather than working just for your approval or a sticker.
• Listen carefully to young children. Take their ideas and opinions into account and involve them in making decisions about daily events.
• Young children with disabilities or learning difficulties may need additional support in making choices and decisions and being autonomous.

Understanding emotions

• Create a listening culture and atmosphere which is calm and caring, where young children feel able to express their emotions
• Model caring responses and comforting or helping behaviours in your interactions with all children.
• Name and talk about a wide range of feelings and make it clear that all feelings are understandable and acceptable. Put children’s feelings into words for them: It looks like you’re cross about that.
• Model how you manage your own feelings, e.g. I’m feeling a bit angry and I need to calm down, so I’m going to…
• Help children to recognise when their actions hurt others.  Do not expect children to say sorry before they have a real understanding of what this means. Instead help them to suggest solutions to a conflict when they are emotionally ready.
• Be emotionally available to young children when they need to “emotionally refuel” to help them to cope with difficult situations, conflict and difficult emotions.
• Ask children for their ideas on what might make people feel better when they are sad or cross.
• Children with developmental differences such as Autism Spectrum Disorders may need additional support in developing empathy. Using role play opportunities, social stories and providing feedback can help a child to recognise their feelings of empathy
• Provide clear boundaries without being inflexible.
• Discuss rules and fairness with young children and show positive appreciation of young children’s pro-social behaviours of kindness and helpfulness for example.
• Support children in recognising the consequences of behaviours and responses that make other children or adults feel upset and help them to repair this by finding new responses or behaviours.
• Actively listen to children’s talk, play, body language and behaviours and think about what the child is telling you.
• Make opportunities for children and adults to listen to each other and explain their thinking, feelings and actions as far as they are able.
• Collaborate with children in creating rules and expectations within a group such as mutual respect, compromise, caring behaviours towards themselves, others and the environment.
• Adopt a partnership approach with parents when discussing boundaries and expectations to maintain continuity for children.

Listening and attention

• Engage in role play and imaginary play scenarios and  model listening behaviours.
• Encourage children to listen to their friends and take turns in play and activities.
• Make mistakes when telling stories/singing songs so the children correct you.
• Cue children, particularly those with communication difficulties, to listen by first using their name, and signal a change of conversation, e.g. Now we are going to talk about…
• Share rhymes, books and stories from many cultures, sometimes using languages other than English, particularly where children are learning English as an additional language.
• Invite parents and members of wider communities to story-telling opportunities, so children can use their full language repertoire. Children then hear a range of languages, and the value of home languages as well as English.
• Introduce “rhyme time” bags containing books that are relevant to the communities of your setting.  Encourage taking these home, and involve parents in rhymes and singing games.
• Ask parents to record and share songs and rhymes that have meaning to them, their family and community.
• Choose stories with repeated refrains, dances and action songs involving looking and pointing, and songs that require replies and turn-taking.
• Plan regular short periods when individuals listen to others, such as singing a short song, sharing an experience or describing something they have seen or done.
• Play games which involve listening for a signal, such as Simon Says, and use Ready, steady…go!
• Use opportunities to stop and listen carefully for environmental sounds, and talk about sounds you can hear using words such as long, short, high, low.
• Play with sand timers to help extend concentration for children who find it difficult to focus their attention on a task.
• Explain why it is important to pay attention by looking and listening when others are speaking.
• Give children opportunities both to speak and to listen, ensuring that the needs of children learning English as an additional language are met, so that they can participate fully starting with simple actions and gestures, progressing to single words and phrases, and then to using more complex sentences.

Understanding

• Ask children to think in advance and predict how they will accomplish a task. Talk through and sequence the stages together.
• Enjoy sharing stories with individual children and small groups.  Engage in sustained shared thinking with them  to extend their thinking and use of vocabulary.
• Use appropriate vocabulary during play with children to encourage them to think about stories and cultural narratives.
• Use stories from books to focus children’s attention on predictions and explanations, e.g. Why did the boat tip over?
• Help children to
  • identify patterns, e.g. what generally happens to good and wicked characters at the end of stories
  • draw conclusions: The sky has gone dark. It must be going to rain
  • explain effect: It fell over because it was too tall.
  • predict: It might not grow in there if it is too dark.
  • speculate: What if the bridge falls down?

Speaking

• Support children’s growing ability to express a wide range of feelings orally, and talk about their own experiences.
• Introduce and repeat new words in a range of contexts and encourage children to use them in their own talk
• Encourage conversation with others and demonstrate appropriate conventions: turn-taking, waiting until someone else has finished, listening to others and using expressions such as please, thank you and can I…?. At the same time, respond sensitively to social conventions used at home.
• Show children how to use language for negotiating, by saying May I…?, Would it be all right…?, I think that… and Will you…? in your interactions with them.
• Model language appropriate for different audiences, for example, a visitor.
• Encourage children to predict possible endings to stories and events.
• Encourage children to experiment with words and sounds, e.g. in nonsense rhymes.
• Encourage children to develop narratives in their play, using words such as: first, last, next, before, after, all, most, some, each, every.
• Value children’s contributions and use them to inform and shape the direction of discussions.
• Encourage opportunities for conversations between small groups of children.  Support these moments and act as a facilitator when appropriate.
• Listen to language and conversation that emerge through play, particularly play that is led by the child.

Moving and handling

• Encourage children to move with controlled effort, and model use of vocabulary in context such as strong, firm, gentle, heavy, stretch, reach, tense and floppy.
• Use music of different tempo, styles and cultures to create moods and talk about how people move when they are sad, happy or cross.
• Motivate children to be active through group games, action songs and singing.
• Talk about why children should take care when moving freely. Notice children who frequently bump into obstacles or fall over and talk with parents/carers about how they move at home.
• Teach children the skills they need to use equipment safely, e.g. cutting with scissors or using tools. Be aware of children who may not have had these experiences at home and talk with parents/carers about increasing opportunities at home.
• Encourage children to use the vocabulary of movement, e.g. gallop, slither; of instruction e.g. follow, lead and copy by modelling and using the vocabulary in context.
• Pose challenging questions such as Can you get all the way round the climbing frame without your knees touching it?
• Talk with children about the need to match their actions to the space they are in.
• Show children how to collaborate in throwing, rolling, fetching and receiving games, encouraging children to play with one another once their skills are sufficient.
• Introduce and encourage children to use the vocabulary of manipulation, e.g. squeeze and prod’
• Explain why safety is an important factor in handling tools, equipment and materials, and have sensible rules for everybody to follow.
• Value and support children’s own judgements of risk, encouraging them to think about what to be aware of and how they can stay safe.
• Explain benefits of outdoor learning to parents/carers so that children come dressed appropriately for different weathers and seasons.
• Notice a child who moves repetitively in a particular way e.g. spinning around, flapping hands or using a throwing action. Talk to parents/carers about schemas and find constructive ways for the child to move safely.  These kinds of movements may require investigation in the future if they continue.
• Notice a child who lacks strength in limbs to push, pull or move safely over climbing equipment. Find out what opportunities the child has at home for outdoor adventure and risk and adapt routines to increase outdoor physical play.

Health and self-care

• Be aware that some children may have sensory issues around food texture, taste, smell, or colour. Talk with parents and monitor. Find out what steps might be appropriate to build the child’s confidence and broaden their food repertoire, supporting their sensory integration.
• Acknowledge and encourage children’s efforts to manage their personal needs, and to use and return resources appropriately. Promote health awareness by talking with children about exercise, its effect on their bodies and the positive contribution it can make to their health. Be sensitive to varying family expectations and life patterns when encouraging thinking about health.
• Highlight the importance of physical activity and active play within the home setting, and the mutual pleasure and benefits for both adults and children from shared physical games and activities. Emphasising the fun can be more effective than warnings to parents about obesity.
• Discuss with children why they get hot and encourage them to think about the effects of the environment, such as whether opening a window helps everybody to be cooler.
• Understand that regression in self-care can occur as children consolidate development or in response to anxiety or traumatic event. Find ways of supporting the child to return to previous level of development without judgement or disapproval.

Reading

• Read aloud to children every day, introducing children to a wide variety of literature, and talking about the print and digital books you share.
• Encourage children to tell their own stories in their own way, to take the lead in storytelling so you can listen and learn from children about what they know and are interested in.
• Discuss and model ways of finding out information from non-fiction texts in print books, digital resources and online.
• Encourage children to add to their first-hand experience of the world by seeking information using print and digital sources of information.

Writing

• Find out about, show interest in and legitimise children’s out-of-school writing practices and interests. Remember that not all writing formats go from left to right.
• Talk to children about things they might write to support their play inside and outside, e.g. they might make a map for a journey, a job list for a builder, or spells for potion making.
• Write stories, poems, jokes, lists, plans, maps etc. together with children on paper and using digital technology so that children they can see authorship and spelling in action.
• Talk to children about the letters that represent the sounds they hear at the beginning of their own names and other familiar words.
• Model how to segment the sounds(phonemes) in simple words and how the sounds are represented by letters (graphemes).
• Encourage children to apply their own grapheme/phoneme knowledge to what they write in meaningful contexts.
• Support and scaffold individual children’s writing as opportunities arise.

Comparison

• Model comparing numbers in problems about fair shares.

Counting

• Play games such as hide and seek that involve counting, forwards and backwards.
• Talk with children about the strategies they have used to solve a problem. Spot opportunities to playfully pose composition problems for children to explore.

Cardinality

• Discuss the order of numbers in context, e.g. finding a page number.
• Enjoy subitising games and sustained shared thinking about number, indoors and outdoors.
• Encourage cardinal counting by saying how many there are after counting (…6, 7, 8.  There are 8 balls).
• In everyday activities, ask children to count out a number of things from a group (e.g. Could you get seven cups for snacktime?)
• Encourage children to make predictions and visualise the outcome in stories, rhymes and songs if one (or two) is added or taken away.
• Talk to children about the marks and signs they use to represent and communicate their thinking. As appropriate, model and discuss informal and standard ways (e.g. using arrows, plus and minus signs).
• Begin to model calculations in mathematical stories and number rhymes and in real contexts, using a range of ways of representing (e.g. five-frames).  Use both informal and standard ways to record these, including tallies and symbols. Discuss children’s own graphical strategies to solve problems, using some vocabulary of addition and subtraction.

Spatial Awareness

• Encourage the use of relative terms (in front of, behind, before and after, in a line, next to and between).
• Encourage children to explore what can be seen from different viewpoints.
• Encourage children to describe position and give directions in play and in everyday routines.
• Encourage children to create scaled-down models such as in small world play.
• When children are fitting shapes into an outline or making a model from a 2D picture, help them to select more spatially challenging activities.
• Encourage children to make maps of routes they have walked or travelled in some way.

Shape

• Encourage children to use the names of shapes and their properties (e.g. straight, curved, edges) and prompt them to say what shapes remind them of.
• Discuss different examples of the same shape (e.g. equilateral and right-angled triangles) in a variety of orientations.
• Take opportunities to discuss the shapes that children paint, draw and collage and shapes noticed in their local environment using regular shapes and shapes with no name.
• When acting out their own stories encourage children to make the shapes involved on their own or with others.
• When constructing, sensitively discuss which shapes make other shapes (e.g. triangles making rectangles and hexagons with pattern blocks or mosaic tiles).
• Challenge children to make more complex constructions such as towers of arches, a window or a staircase.

Pattern

• Encourage children to notice and appreciate a range of patterns involving repetition and symmetry in the environment, including traditional patterns from a range of cultures.
• Model using symbols to represent a pattern in other ways (e.g. using a spot/cross/dash pattern of symbols and doing a twirl/jump/glide in response).
• Make deliberate mistakes when creating patterns alongside children and playfully challenge them to fix the problem.
• Make border patterns where the repeating pattern continues around an object or frame.

Measures

• When comparing the length, weight and capacity of things in play and everyday activities, encourage children to predict and give reasons.
• Discuss accuracy, for instance matching ends or starting points, balancing exactly or “fullness”.
• Support timed challenges by timing runs, trails, obstacle courses, etc. and teach children how to use the stopwatch.
• Discuss the order and sequence of events in routines and role play using the language of time (first, then, after, before, next, sooner, later).
• Draw children’s attention to visual timetables and clock times, focusing on the hour hand.

People and communities

• Encourage children to share their feelings and talk about why they respond to experiences in particular ways.
• Explain carefully why some children may need extra help or support for some things, or why some children feel upset by a particular thing.
• Help children and parents to see the ways in which their cultures and beliefs are similar, sharing and discussing practices, resources, celebrations and experiences.
• Strengthen the positive impressions children have of their own cultures and faiths, and those of others in their community, by sharing and celebrating a range of practices and special events.

The world

• Help children to notice and discuss patterns around them, e.g. tree bark, flower petal or leaf shapes, grates, covers, or bricks.
• Examine change over time, for example, growing plants, and change that may be reversed, e.g. melting ice.
• Use appropriate words, e.g. town, village, path, house, flat, cinema, skyscraper, hydrant, cirrus, cumulonimbus,  temple  and synagogue, to help children make distinctions in their observations. 
• Help children to find out about the environment by talking to people, examining photographs and simple maps and visiting local places.
• Encourage children to express opinions on natural and built environments and give opportunities for them to hear different points of view on the quality of the environment.
• Encourage the use of words that help children to express opinions, e.g. busy, quiet and pollution.
• Use correct terms so that, e.g. children will enjoy naming a chrysalis if the practitioner uses its correct name.
• Pose carefully framed open-ended questions and prompts, such as How can we…?What would happen if…? I wonder…

Technology

• Encourage children to speculate on the reasons why things happen or how things work.
• In conversation highlight technology in aspects of nature, e.g. encouraging models of birds showing purposes and functions of wing feathers, body feathers, beaks, feet reflecting differences of different kinds of birds.
• Support children to coordinate actions to use technology, for example, call a telephone number or create a video recording.
• Teach and encourage children to click on different icons to cause things to happen in a computer program.
• Talk to children about their actions, and support children to understand different purposes of different technologies.
• Retrieve content and use to facilitate discussions, allowing children to recall trips/ past events to enable them to connect to their wider community

Creating with materials

• Draw attention to children’s choice and use of: materials, tools and techniques, experimentation with colour, design, texture, form and function.
• Use individual, small group, and large group discussion to regularly engage children in explaining work in progress.
• Recognise the importance of drawing in providing a bridge between imaginary play and writing, and that all are key forms of communication and tools for thinking.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Support children to gain confidence in their own way of representing and sharing ideas.
• Be aware of the link between children’s imaginative play and how they develop a narrative structure. 
• Recognise and promote children’s agency in expressing their unique and subjective viewpoint through the arts.
• Support children in communicating through their bodies by responding to, and sometimes joining in with their expressive movement linked to their imaginative ideas.
• Introduce descriptive language to support children within the context of their own imaginative experiences.
• Celebrate children’s imaginative ideas and creations by sharing them, e.g. impromptu performances, learning journeys with families, display documentation, digital portfolios.

Making relationships

• Provide stability in staffing, key person relationships and in grouping of the children.
• Plan opportunities for children to spend time with their key person, individually and in small groups.
• Create opportunities for children to get to know everyone in the group.
• Plan the environment to create spaces for children to play alone, alongside or with others as they choose.
• Provide time, space and open-ended materials for children to collaborate with one another in different ways, for example, in block play.
• Provide play activities that encourage cooperation and collaboration, such as parachute activities and ring games.
• Choose books, puppets, dolls and small world play that help children explore their ideas about friends and friendship and to talk about feelings, e.g. someone saying You can’t play’
• For young children who are finding it hard to make relationships in the group, develop other situations such as a forest school activity or a creative arts project that may be more encouraging.

Sense of self

• Involve parents in their children’s learning and learn about each child’s home culture from them.
• Plan regular opportunities for children to talk to their small group about something they are interested in or have done.
• Include mirrors and photographs of the children and their families and friends in the environment.
• Reflect children’s socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds and those of the wider community in the environment, play opportunities and resources.
• Give time for children to pursue their play and learning without interruption, to complete activities such as role play, construction, building dens and painting to their satisfaction, and to return to their activities if they wish.
• Provide experiences and activities that are challenging but achievable.
• Provide a role-play area resourced with materials reflecting children’s family lives and communities. Consider including resources reflecting lives that are unfamiliar, to broaden children’s knowledge and reflect an inclusive ethos.
• Involve children in drawing or taking photographs of favourite activities or places, to help them describe their individual preferences and opinions.
• Provide books, stories, songs, music and other cultural artefacts that are drawn from a wide range of traditions and styles.
• Provide and engage with CPD to extend practitioner’s awareness of anti-bias practice.

Understanding emotions

• Plan small group circle times when children can explore feelings, e.g. through stories.
• Create familiar, predictable routines, including opportunities to help in appropriate tasks, e.g. setting the table or putting away toys.
• Display a sequence of photographs to show the routines in the setting to support younger or new children and children with additional needs.
• Provide photographs and books where emotions are being expressed to look at and talk about with children.
• Use Persona Dolls to help children consider feelings, ways to help others feel better, and ways to manage conflicting opinions, be fair and get on with each other.
• Provide a range of music, stories, open ended materials and play opportunities, play props and resources to support young children in exploring and making sense of feelings such as fear, anxiety and anger.
• Offer environments that include stimulating and challenging spaces but also calm and comfortable spaces.
• Set, explain and maintain clear, reasonable and consistent boundaries so that children can feel safe and secure in their play and other activities.
• Use pictures, shared gestures or sign language to show young children and those with additional needs the expected behaviours.
• Involve children in agreeing codes of behaviour and taking responsibility for implementing them.
• Provide books with stories about characters that follow or break rules, and the effects of their behaviour on others.
• Carefully prepare all children for any changes to their routine, particularly those with a SEN such as autism.
• Have agreed procedures outlining how to respond to unexpected or unusual  changes in children’s behaviour.
• Share policies and practice on safeguarding procedure with parents/carers from the outset.
• Provide and engage in CPD that supports practitioners understanding and response to children’s emotional difficulties and safeguarding concerns.

Listening and attention

• When making up alliterative jingles, draw attention to the similarities in sounds at the beginning of words and emphasise the initial sound, e.g. mmmmummy,   shshshshadow, K-K-K-KKaty.
• Plan activities listening carefully to different speech sounds, e.g. a sound chain copying the voice sound around the circle, or identifying other children’s voices on tape.
• When singing or saying rhymes, talk about the similarities in the rhyming words. Make up alternative endings and encourage children to supply the last word of the second line, e.g. Hickory Dickory bee, The mouse ran down the...
• Set up a listening area or other opportunities where children can enjoy rhymes and stories. either independently or with an adult.
• Provide instruments for musical play.
• Provide opportunities to listen in different kinds of environments e.g. outdoor spaces, dens, large and small rooms and buildings
• Explore different kinds of surfaces and how noise bounces off them,
• Talk with children about how we listen differently to different things, for example animals and types of music.

Understanding

• Set up shared experiences that children can reflect upon, e.g. visits, cooking, or stories that can be re-enacted.
• Help children to predict and order events coherently, by providing props and materials that encourage children to re-enact, using talk and action
• Find out from parents how children make themselves understood at home; confirm which their preferred language other modes of communication are.
• Tune into children’s preferred modes of communication – perhaps direct questions feel confronting but shared making or an exchange of funny expressions or gestures creates a connection more effectively.
• Provide practical experiences that encourage children to ask and respond to questions, e.g. explaining pulleys or wet and dry sand.
• Alongside books, introduce story props, such as pictures, puppets and objects, to encourage children to retell stories and to think about how the characters feel.
• Displays can connect experiences across places or provide reminders of previous trips, events or seasons, for example.
• Set up displays that are interactive so children can touch, pick up etc and talk about/reflect on their experiences
• Provide for, initiate and join in imaginative play and role-play or real life storytelling encouraging children to talk about what is happening and to act out the scenarios in character.

Speaking

• Give time and make spaces  for children to initiate discussions from shared experiences and have conversations with peers and adults.
• Give thinking time for children to decide what they want to say and how they will say it.
• Encourage language play, e.g. through stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and action songs that require intonation.
• Decide on the key vocabulary linked to activities, and ensure that all practitioners make opportunities to use the words in a range of contexts such as songs, stories, games, activities and natural conversations..
• Plan collaborative activities. Help children to think and talk about how they will begin, what parts each will play and what materials they will need. Review activities with children and encourage them to think about and discuss the strategies they used. 
• Provide opportunities for talking for a wide range of purposes, e.g. to present ideas to others as descriptions, explanations, instructions or justifications, and to discuss and plan individual or shared activities.
• Provide opportunities for children to participate in meaningful speaking and listening activities. For example, children can take models that they have made to show children in another group or class and explain how they were made.

Moving and handling

• Provide time and space to enjoy energetic play outdoors daily.
• Provide large portable equipment that children can move about safely and cooperatively to create their own structures, such as milk crates, tyres, large cardboard tubes.
• Practise movement skills through games with beanbags, cones, balls and hoops.
• Plan activities where children can practise moving in different ways and at different speeds, balancing, target throwing, rolling, kicking and catching
• Provide sufficient equipment for children to share, so that waiting to take turns does not spoil enjoyment.
• Mark out boundaries for some activities, such as games involving wheeled toys or balls, so that children can more easily regulate their own activities.
• Provide activities that give children the opportunity and motivation to practise manipulative skills, e.g. cooking, painting, clay and playing instruments.
• Provide play resources including small-world toys, construction sets, threading and posting toys, dolls’ clothes and material for collage.
• Teach children skills of how to use tools and materials effectively and safely and give them opportunities to practise them.
• Provide a range of left-handed tools, especially left-handed scissors, as needed.
• Support children with physical difficulties with nonslip mats, small trays for equipment, and triangular or thicker writing tools.
• Provide a range of construction toys of different sizes, made of wood, rubber or plastic, that fix together in a variety of ways, e.g. by twisting, pushing, slotting or magnetism.
• Provide access to waterproofs, wellington boots and a changing area where children can dress/undress independently.
• Provide equipment that supports different kinds of schemas, so that children have an opportunity to build on natural patterns of movement.
• Agree acceptable levels of risk and challenge, identify hazards and actions needed to maximise opportunities indoors and outdoors.
• Adapt or create spaces to ensure that children with limited physical mobility can move safely and with confidence.
• Teach children how to access, use and store resources safely to build independence and autonomy.
• Provide materials to create enclosed spaces and dens such as fabric, poles and pegs.

Health and self-care

• Plan opportunities, particularly after exercise, for children to talk about how their bodies feel.
• Review enabling environments for adventure and challenge, identifying areas where children are encouraged to take physical risks.
• Develop and make use of a variety of natural landscapes including slopes, woodland and natural dens in the undergrowth.
• Provide outdoor resources which complement indoor provision, with an opportunity for children to play and explore on a larger scale.
• Find ways to involve children so that they are all able to be active inside and outside in ways that interest them and match their stage of development, health and ability.
• Use mobility aids, adapted equipment and clothing to ensure the outdoor area is fully accessible to all children; use portable fencing and zoned areas to change the size of the space to meet children’s needs.

Reading

• Provide a rich range of quality children's literature and dialogic shared reading experiences to involve children in critical engagement with narratives, characters and plots.
• Provide a range of everyday signs and written texts in play areas (labels, lists, recipes, instructions, etc.) so children can include these in their play.
• Make story books with children in print and/or digital formats to make personalised and meaningful books and ebooks to read with children, and that children can read themselves.
• Make a classroom book of children’s own stories, scribed by an adult and/or drawn by children.
• Ensure children have access to a wide range of literature that represents diversity in the local and global community, ensuring every child has the opportunity to find a character they can relate to.
• Introduce children to new words, and explore their meaning together e.g. by acting out words and playing games with words.
• Provide story sacks and boxes and make them with the children for use in the setting and at home.
• Help children to identify the main events in a story and to enact stories, for example in their imaginative play.
• Provide story boards and props which support children to talk about a story’s characters and sequences of events.
• Include playful, multisensory and creative experiences and games that promote children’s interest in reading and in developing phonics skills and knowledge.
• Demonstrate using phonics as a strategy to decode words while children can see the text, e.g. using big books or an interactive whiteboard.
• Provide varied texts, including decodable texts, and encourage children to use all their skills including their phonic knowledge to practise reading with the skills and knowledge they have, so they experience success.
• Begin to introduce playful systematic phonics sessions in fun ways that capture children’s interest, sustain motivation and reinforce learning and success.

Writing

• Provide word banks, notebooks, clipboards, post-its and other writing resources for both indoor and outdoor play.
• Ensure resources enable children to draw on their out-of-school practices and personal interests, such as children’s popular culture or sports teams.
• Include oral stories and explore ways for both adults and children to develop oral storytelling skills.
• Provide a range of opportunities to write for different purposes about things that interest children.
• Resource role-play areas with listening and writing equipment, and ensure that role-play areas encourage writing of signs with a real purpose, e.g. a pet shop.
• Plan enjoyable activities and games that help children create rhyming strings of real and imaginary words, e.g. Maddie, daddy, baddie, laddie.
• Support children to understand that the letter shapes they write (graphemes) link to units of sound (phonemes).
• Provide regular playful multisensory systematic phonics activities that help children to represent phonemes in their writing.
• When reading stories, talk with children about the author and illustrator, to help children identify with these roles. For example, ask children why they think the author wrote the story, if the author knew the people in the story, or why the illustrator chose to draw a particular moment in the story. Ask children if they would like to be an author and/or illustrator.

Comparison

• Involve children in voting, e.g. for books to read at story time, using linking cubes with children’s names on.
• Discuss examples and display large numbers including hundreds, thousands and a million.

Counting

• Jump with children along a number track, counting each jump or counting on.
• Sing counting songs and count together forwards and backwards, sometimes starting from different numbers and in different step sizes. Discuss numbers coming before, after and between and stress patterns.
• Plan opportunities to order mixed-up numerals.
• When counting groups as part of routines, e.g. self-registration with ten-frames, dinner chart etc,. record the final total as a label for children to see.
• Subitise with children, talking about how they see numbers of things made up in a variety of arrangements (e.g. recognising odd and even numbers).
• Pose everyday estimation problems and establish mental estimation benchmarks, e.g. more or less than 10.
• Set up an estimation station where everyone records guesses; later count and order the guesses.
• Build counting and ways of representing numbers into everyday routines.
• Provide numeral cards for children to order on a washing line.
• Play subitising games which involve quickly revealing and hiding numbers of objects, perhaps showing numeral cards and fingers.
• Drop marbles into a tin and ask the children to listen (without looking) to count how many there are.
• Provide opportunities for children to match a number of objects to the numeral, including zero, and display number lines to 100 at child height.
• Provide dice, board and card games, sometimes involving older children, families and members of the local community.
• Provide resources to make “staircase” patterns which show that the next counting number includes the previous number plus one.
• Display children’s mathematical representations, including explanations of the children’s meaning making.

Spatial Awareness

• Play barrier games (where players have an identical set of objects which are hidden from each other; one player makes an arrangement of objects and gives instructions to the other to try to make the same arrangement).
• Plan opportunities for children to describe and recall familiar routes.
• Engage families in taking photos of familiar things from different viewpoints

Shape

• Provide resources for shape play including unit blocks, pattern blocks, mosaic tiles and jigsaw puzzles with different levels of challenge.
• Teach strategies for solving shape and jigsaw puzzles, describing shape properties and modelling the mathematical vocabulary such as straight, corner, edges.
• Play games focussing on the properties of shapes, such as hiding and partially revealing a shape, asking children to say what different shapes it could be or not, and why.

Pattern

• Provide opportunities for printing patterns using a variety of objects.
• Using photos, challenge children to copy and continue patterns.
• Invite children to create a pattern with the same structure using different objects (e.g. instead of a red/blue/blue pattern, create a sheep/cow/cow pattern).

Measures

• Have areas where children can explore the properties of objects, compare lengths, weigh and measure.
• Provide objects in a range of contexts varying in length, capacity or weight, including tall thin, short fat, large light and small heavy things.
• Provide pictorial sequences for instructions.
• Model using measuring tools including height charts, rulers, tape-measures, scales and timers.
• Sing songs about the days of the week and months of the year, referring to a calendar. Countdown to events.

People and communities

• Plan extra time for helping children in transition, such as when they move from one setting to another or between different groups in the same setting.
• Provide activities and opportunities for children to share experiences and knowledge from different parts of their lives with each other.
• Provide ways of preserving memories of special events, e.g. making a book, collecting photographs, sound or video 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.
• Ensure the use of up-to-date, appropriate photographs of parts of the world that are commonly stereotyped and misrepresented.
• Help children to learn positive attitudes and challenge negative attitudes and stereotypes, e.g. using puppets, Persona Dolls, stories and books showing black heroes or disabled kings or queens or families with same sex parents, having a visit from a male midwife or female fire fighter.
• Visit different parts of the local community, including areas where some children may be very knowledgeable, e.g. Chinese supermarket, local church, elders lunch club, Greek café.
• Provide role-play areas with a variety of resources reflecting diversity.
• Make a display with the children, showing all the people who make up the community of the setting.
• Share stories that reflect the diversity of children’s experiences.
• Invite people from a range of cultural backgrounds to talk about aspects of their lives or the things they do in their work, such as a volunteer who helps people become familiar with the local area.

The world

• Give opportunities to record and creatively represent findings by, e.g. drawing, writing, making a model or photographing, through music, dancing or dressing up.
• Provide stories that help children to make sense of different environments.
• Provide first-hand experiences to support children in making sense of micro environments, the specific conditions which enable each plant or animal to live and thrive.
• 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, planting and taking care of flower and vegetable beds or organising equipment outdoors.
• Make connections with places and spaces locally, such as museums, galleries, open spaces, arts centres, sports centres. Encourage parents to join you on regular outings, which can result in family visits to the same places.

Technology

• 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.
• Provide a range of programmable toys for children to play with, as well as equipment involving ICT, such as computers, touchscreen devices and internet-connected toys.

Creating with materials

• Offer opportunities to encounter and revisit key materials, e.g. drawing media, paper, paint, cardboard and clay in order to continue to develop expertise as tools for expression and communication.
• Provide a range of joining materials (e.g. stapler, masking tape, glue, string, thread, split pins, treasury tags, card strips) to support children working in both 2D and 3D.
• Supply open-ended props and materials that can easily be transformed in play.

Being imaginative and expressive

• Enrich the environment inside and out with materials, resources, natural objects, images, music, dance (via image, film) for children to inspire their imagination.
• Make materials accessible so that children are able to imagine and develop their enquiries and ideas while they are still fresh in their minds.
• Provide children with opportunities to develop their enquiries using materials and tools over extended periods of time.