Best practice features:

• Curriculum An expert’s view on what settings can do to integrate children’s use of technology into their learning and play, supporting them to be creators rather than consumers.
• Music Get into the groove with expert advice from Penny Tassoni and ensure that all children benefit from the joy of music making.
• Health and Nutrition Understand how a plant-based diet can provide young children with the nutrients they need.
• Supporting children whose parents have problems with alcohol
  With more parents affected by substance mis-use due to the pandemic, find out how to step in if a problem is identified
• Government Reading Framework Looking at how schools and settings have responded to its approach and weighing the pros and cons.

In our activity section: 
This month we’ve explored fairies... in a special project that brought children together to work collaboratively on a fairy museum. There are lots of exciting maths and science projects to pursue outdoors this month, and Julie Mountain explains how in her Outdoor Calendar for November. From making maps of the local area to finding out about homelessness in different countries, Diane Boyd has great ideas for approaching Sustainable Cities and Communities. In an A – Z of learning, the Rachel Keeling Nursery Team focus on T is for talk... Explore essential resources that support children’s trajectory schemes.

Management:

• Report on Sustainability
  An in-depth look at how settings are increasing their ecco practices to embrace both management and learning.
• Staff health and wellbeing Advice on how to encourage staff to be physically active in part 7 of this series. In her social media column, Nicola Read looks how to use Facebook pages and community groups to build profile.
• Training 
  Discover why the Level 5 Apprenticeship has the potential to provide a big boost for skills and leadership in the sector.
• Outdoor CPD: Are you ready to take on an action research project to enhance your outdoor learning?
  
  News, analysis and opinion includes:
• Analysis Katy Morton looks at how the end of furlough and reduced nursery occupancy is fuelling business uncertainty in many areas of the country.  
• Opinion The Government’s communications around the early years and teaching could have been written by a satirist, says Michael Pettavel. Meanwhile Anita Grant of Play England flags the importance of outdoor play spaces when it comes to children’s recovery from the constraints of the pandemic.
• Interview Andrew Bollington unveils the Squirrel Scouts, a new programme for four-and-five-year-olds which aims to take the movement to a new generation.
  
  
• Nursery Management Supplement
  
  Get up to speed with key developments in the nursery business sector, including what is currently driving a return to a healthy level of sales and acquisitions, new approaches to boost recruitment and where next for the digital revolution. Nursery managers also outline how they are bedding in the revised EYFS.

• Poster: Collect the third poster in our Construction series which features Skyscrapers!