Features

Nursery World North Review: Show stoppers

New resources were launched and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage was previewed at our exciting exhibition in Manchester. Ruth Thomson reports on the action.

Nearly 1,000 visitors flocked to the Nursery World North show in Manchester on 7 and 8 October to tour the stands and attend some sell-out seminars.

Exhibitors at the EventCity venue showcasing their resources, equipment and services ranged from Rosy Apple Childcare Training and TTS, with its expanded Rainbow Range, to Early Years from The Consortium and Fawns Recreational Service, exhibiting its new Woodland Explorer Range.

Products launched at the show included the latest version of the StoryPhones software from Ameeca, Action Kids' new short story books, with accompanying music CDs, and Community Playthings' nursery gym. The gym features a variety of slides, stairs, towers, tunnels and textured surfaces, which can be reconfigured to create new 'playscapes' for very young children to climb, crawl and slide upon.

Anyone who booked a seminar ticket in advance of the show was put into a draw to win nursery gym equipment worth more than £1,700. The lucky winner was Danielle Tomlinson, a nursery practitioner at Goodshaw Kindergarten in Rossendale, Lancashire.

EYFS SEMINARS

The programme of seminars, themed around the revised EYFS, were packed out with professionals eager to find about the likely format of the new curriculum and its effect on practice.

Kicking off the programme and providing an overview of the proposed changes was early years consultant Ann Langston, a member of the expert panel involved in reworking the framework.

Our next show is at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London, on 17-18 February, which will also offer an extended programme of seminars on the new EYFS and a bumper crop of exhibitors. See you there!