Small-world area: In miniature

Small resources can help children to develop some big ideas in their imaginative play, as Jane Drake explains

Long-term planning

Long-term plans chart what and how children may learn during their time in a setting and so ensures that a setting's permanent provision gives continuous access to a broad and balanced curriculum.

The small-world area will offer basic equipment that will enable children and adults to create imaginative environments. The long-term plan for this area will list these resources and outline how the space is organised. It will highlight key curricular areas and include suggestions on how to most effectively support children's learning.

Possible learning experiences

Small-world play is particularly rich in opportunities for developing language and imaginative thinking. It lets children enter an imaginary world where they can create characters, develop exciting and unique ideas, and revisit and represent real-life experiences.

In this area, children will be able to:

• select equipment to build and develop environments
• use experiences, photographs and fiction and non-fiction books to inform the designing of environments
• find out about features of living things and their habitats
• use one object to represent another
• make own props to support play
• introduce narrative into their play
• retell familiar stories talking about key characters and sequencing events
• work alone or co-operatively
• talk about their ideas and negotiate roles with others
• use language to link ideas and recreate experiences
• attempt to write signs and labels
• explore concepts of space and size
• make maps and plans, for example, train or bus routes
• become deeply involved in play and develop ideas and understanding over a period of time
• handle and manipulate small equipment, developing fine motor control and co-ordination.

Organisation

• Allow plenty of space so that a few children can work in the area at the same time.
• Store materials and equipment in clearly labelled containers.
• Provide a surface, such as a table or the top of a storage trolley, where children can build environments and suitable shelving that will enable them to access equipment independently.
• If you decide against offering all resources at once, think about how to organise the rotation of equipment.
• Recognise the importance of and facilitate links with other areas of provision, for example, making buildings in the technology workshop for a small-world environment.
• Consider how children can independently access small-world equipment for their play in other areas, for example, finding play people to 'inhabit' a castle made in the construction area.
• Provide small-world play opportunities both indoors and outdoors.
• Plan regular adult focus time in the area to support children's play.

Resources

Settings should provide:

• large and small shallow trays to be used as bases for environments
• small-world people, furniture, vehicles, farm animals, zoo animals, dinosaurs, sea creatures, and so on
• doll's house or individual room boxes
• trees, walls, buildings, fences
• imitation grass, lengths of fabric (for example, blue to represent a river), bubblewrap, sandpaper
• large stones and tubs of sand, gravel, pebbles, shells
• maps, atlases, photographs of different environments (for example, desert, snowy mountain, forest, city)
• clipboards, paper, mark makers
• large sheets of paper for creating layouts of farms or roads
• fiction and non-fiction books.

Adult role

• Work alongside the children as they create environments.
• Encourage children to think imaginatively and to find items to represent other objects, for example, a twig from the outdoor area to use as a tree.
• Observe children's play and assess their learning against stepping stones and early learning goals.
• Make sure that equipment reflects a range of cultures.

Medium-term planning

Planning at this stage enables practitioners to focus on children's learning for a forthcoming period, usually of between two and six weeks. It may be that teams plan around a topic or predictable interest, or they may decide to raise the profile of an area of learning across the whole of provision. Medium-term planning should not inhibit spontaneous responses to children's interests and needs but rather, should enhance basic resources and opportunities.

Topic: bear stories

Additional resources

Large shallow tray, two bears (one large, one small), cardboard box with opening, cotton wool, bubblewrap, white gravel, small-world furniture and trees, twigs, icing sugar, sieve

Activities

Building the bears' environment (for example, covering the box with cotton wool to create a cave, making 'snowdrifts' using bubblewrap), furnishing the cave, talking about and retelling the bear stories, changing and making up storylines, talking about the features of a cold climate.

Topic: transport

Additional resources

Roll of lining paper, masking tape, card, pens, local street maps, road atlases, small-world buildings, trees, people, cars, buses, bikes, traffic signs

Activities

Taping a length of paper to the floor, marking roads on the paper, building different environments along the paper, linking places (for example, the park, shops and school) by road, making journeys by moving cars along the roadways, representing own travel experiences, developing imaginative ideas about the journeys of characters in the environment, reading and writing signs, talking about features of their local environment, using positional and directional language.

Curriculum focus: exploration and investigation

Additional resources

Large builder's mixing tray, cress seeds, roll of cotton wool (dyed brown with food colouring), piece of living turf, gravel, sand, fences, small-world animals and people, watering can

Activities

Setting up the farm, talking about the features of different animals and about their nutritional needs, planting cress seeds and positioning turf to create 'fields', making paths using sand and gravel, watering the cress and turf daily, observing and talking about the changes as the 'crops' grow, commenting on the changes in sand when it gets wet, 'harvesting' crops by cutting cress and grass, representing their own experiences of farms.

Short-term planning

Short-term planning involves the practical organisation of the week in terms of staff roles and responsibilities. It can also entail planning focus activities identified on the medium or long-term plans. But a crucial aspect of planning in the short term is the considered response by adults to children's observed interests and needs.

Case study: Rachel

Observation

Rachel recently returned from a seaside family holiday, keen to share her experiences at nursery, but she needed lots of support from her mother to express herself. She showed pebbles she had collected on the beach with pride to staff and other children.

Staff response

Seeing Rachel's enthusiasm for her holiday, staff set up a small-world seaside to enable her to represent her experiences through play and encourage her to communicate her ideas. Rachel's keyworker asked her mother to provide holiday photographs as a reference point for planning the 'seaside' and to help them in supporting Rachel's language through key vocabulary and carefully framed questions.

Key early learning goal

• Use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences

Resources

Large sand or water tray, dry sand, Rachel's pebbles, other stones, gravel, rocks, small-world people, boats, ice cream van, buckets (toothpaste lids) and spades, balls (large beads), towels (fabric pieces), sun umbrellas, buildings, imitation pond weed, water

Activity content

• With Rachel and other interested children, set up a sandy beach with 'rock pools' in the tray and add water at the lower end to represent the sea.
• Encourage the children to introduce the play people and to talk about the scenarios they create.
• Ask Rachel about her experiences, looking at the photos and urging her to add buildings she remembers, such as shops. Use the play people to represent members of her family and talk through the actions as she manipulates them. Model the use of key language.
• Ensure that equipment is available over a period of time so that Rachel and other children can revisit and develop ideas.

About this series

This series outlines how settings can 'build' effective long-, medium- and short-term plans around the areas of provision. The approach is not definitive, and practitioners can adapt it to suit their needs.

To implement the approach effectively, settings should:

• make planning a team effort to ensure that staff understand possible learning opportunities and how to support them
• review their planning regularly in the light of their observations and evaluations.
• The series builds on information provided in:
• 'The small-world area - a guide to resourcing and supporting children's learning', Nursery World, 4 December 2003
• 'All about... Observation and assessment', Nursery World, 6 February 2003
• 'All about...Planning' Nursery World, 6 March 2003