All early years practitioners will recognise the child who repeatedly transports objects around the nursery in bags or the one that likes to climb inside large boxes that have arrived as packaging for a new piece of equipment. After careful observation of children in a range of contexts, it is possible to identify clusters of schemas, simply defined as patterns of repeatable behaviours or actions.
Through some of the activities included in this topic and through planned enhancements to provision, children can further explore schemas such as enveloping, containing and transporting. Of course, it is essential that practitioners liaise closely with parents to build up a whole picture of the child's patterns of behaviour and to explain their planning.
Children's engagement in activities that are planned in response to observed interests will be deep and their concentration sustained, and ample time must be allowed for the pursuit of interests. Although assessing and understanding the individual is essential, it is likely that there will be more than one child in the setting involved in the same schema and so plans may address the needs of a few.
Developing the imagination
The suggestions in this topic aim to provide early years practitioners with a 'toolbox' of ideas that can be used to enable children to engage in a creative process, making connections in their learning and sense of the world around them.
Ideas can also be used to motivate and stimulate children and so offer children exciting and sensory experiences that will inspire play and lead to other activities. There is an emphasis on role play through which young children will be able to represent experiences and explore roles in a 'safe' context.
The power of capturing children's imagination by producing a simple object out of a box or a bag should not be underestimated. The adult role in building up anticipation and challenging children's thinking with open-ended questions is a crucial factor in determining the quality of such an experience, and guidelines are given to support practitioners in this area ('Out of the box', page 18).
Even an ordinary cardboard box, mundane and functional to adults, can provide hours of imaginative play for children. Unlike many of the expensive and sophisticated toys on the market today which are often designed with a single purpose in mind, a cardboard box can be anything the child's imagination allows it to be - a car, a train, a petrol pump, a garage, a post box, a cooker, a bear cave. The possibilities are endless.
In providing children with open-ended equipment and experiences we are promoting creativity and developing skills that impact on all other aspects of children's learning.
Organising equipment
Organising space and storing equipment in the setting is an ongoing challenge for settings and 'In its place' (page 20) outlines some ideas on how to address these problems. We are always on the look-out for practical and inexpensive storage systems to bring order to the setting and make our lives easier. Of course, it is important that systems work for the adults, but at the same time practitioners must think about the impact that they have on children's experiences and learning.
When considering the organisational aspects of provision, it is important to plan for children's developing independence and decision making. Time must also be spent organising 'sets' of equipment that enable practitioners to respond effectively to children's interests, and examples of what to include in weather resource boxes are given in 'Rain or shine' (page 15).
Jane Drake is a partnership advisory teacher in Leeds and author of Planning Children's Play and Learning in the Foundation Stage and Organising Play in the Early Years (David Fulton Publishers, 16.50 and 15 respectively)
