Enabling Environments: Collections - Hit home

Young children love to mimic their home life at the nursery. Many will gravitate to the home corner where they can prepare family meals, look after baby dolls, vacuum or write the weekly shopping list. Others will enjoy acting out scenarios on a smaller scale, pretending to be mummy or daddy as they play with figures in a doll's house. But some children will use these resources to support other forms of play, transforming the doll's house into a dinosaur cave or the home corner into Superman's house. Either way, it is vital to allow children to transport resources freely around the nursery so that they can make their own decisions about their play.

Though often seen as 'easy' to resource, early years consultant and author Helen Bromley says that the home corner is often 'not given enough time and thought in many settings'. She explains, 'Often they contain shoddy furniture and dolls that don't even have a bed each. They are frequently not equipped with obvious reading materials - for example, the Argos Catalogue, TV Guides - or real food packaging which reflect the cultural diversity of the setting and are not tokenistic.'

She would like to see home corners equipped with at least one camera, a mobile phone, a digital photograph frame showing photos of children in role, and, where possible, a computer.

She adds, 'It makes me cringe when all they are equipped with is a washing machine and an ironing board. I don't like plastic food either. It doesn't even look like real food and I wish settings would spend their money on real items, or provide playdough in the home corner.'

Outdoors, she prefers role play to be authentic - a car boot sale, a market, a family BBQ, rather than indoor role play taken outside. She explains, 'Sadly, in many settings cabins usually end up being a place where a load of toys are dumped, or children close the door and bully each other.'

Early years consultant Marion Dowling advocates the use of open-ended materials for children to create their own role-play scenarios. She says that practitioners should provide 'a good sized space stocked with blocks, planks, fabrics, rope, string, gaffa tape, and a range of cardboard boxes.'

CORE RESOURCES

Here are some points to consider when building up a core collection of resources for role play:

• The home corner should be inviting and reflect the children's culture and personal experience. Cushions and rugs, like the Meadow Rug, £119.95, from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk, will make the space look cosy.
• A kitchen with units, a sink, shelves and a dining area is the most common form of home corner but larger settings may have space for more 'rooms', like a sitting room or a bedroom. For kitchens try the PlayWorks range from www.communityplaythings.co.uk, which includes a stove, £165, sink and drawer, £210, and a Welsh cupboard, £237.
• Ensure that the scale of the kitchen units are suitable for different age groups. Under-twos will need low-level units like those in the Toddler Kitchen range, from £64.95 per item, from www.tts-group.co.uk. Or, provide a mixture of larger and smaller components to attract children of different ages. Try the Five-Piece Solid Rubberwood Play Kitchen, £249.99, from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk, or the Chef's Assistant Small Kitchen Set and Accessories, £247.30, from www.wesco-eshop.co.uk. To suit settings with limited space, there's the Corner Kitchen, £299.95, or the Mini Roll and Fold Kitchen, £210, both from www.earlyyearsresources.co.uk.
• Provide seating areas and a table and chairs for mealtimes or office work. A vinyl seating range, the Corner Armchair, £59.90, is available from www.wesco-eshop.co.uk, or there's the Woodcrest Table and two chairs, from £264, at www.communityplaythings.co.uk.
• Set up opportunities for using ICT by providing old mobile phones, computers or cameras for children to incorporate into their role play.
• Offer children other items that might complement their role play, for example: the Wooden Cookware Set, £17.99, and Wooden Mixer, £18.99, from www.earlyyearsresources.co.uk; the Realistic Dinner Set Kitchen Utensils, £13.10, and the Wooden Housework Set, with one child-sized broom and a dustpan and brush, £5.60, both from www.wesco-eshop.co.uk; the Ironing Set, £21.99, and Henry Vacuum Cleaner, £24.99, both from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk; and the Mud Pie Kitchen set, comprising 20 kitchen utensils and frying pans, £34.99; the Children's Apron, £5.95; the Real Life Child's Mop, £9.95 for a set of four, all from Cosy Direct on tel: 01332 370152.
• Ensure that if you provide buggies and prams that children are allowed to use them indoors. For pushchairs, try the Doll Pushchair, from £43.99, a sturdy indoor pushchair made from strong steel tube, from www.earlyyears.co.uk.
• Avoid restrictions on the number of children who can play in the home corner at one . Children need to be able to replicate a family bigger than four people.

SMALL-WORLD RESOURCES

It is important to provide a robust doll's house that allows children to play collaboratively, as some children will spend hours engrossed in this kind of play, day after day. There is a huge variety on the market, but Mel Hughes, director of Reflections on Learning, has spent many years searching for the right combination of features.

He says, 'The job of a good doll's house is to provide the inspiration and the fascination for the child to be able to hang their imagined world on and around the components within the toys they are playing with.'

The company's top seller remains the traditional two-up two-down, cottage-style house (£29.99) made from rubberwood. It can sit on the floor or a desk and can be reached easily by an individual child or a group of children. Open-sided with easy access through the front and roof, it allows maximum interaction between the child's ideas and the characters and furniture within. It comes as a flat pack, along with 24 pieces of furniture and two characters, but fixes together with ease. See the video at www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk/dolls-house.html.

Ms Dowling uses the same principle for small-world play as she does for role play. She says that children may prefer to use a cardboard box as a house and decorate the interior for themselves. She suggests providing some small blocks, scraps of fabric (for curtains and carpets) and some small-scale people and animals. She explains, 'I favour this approach as it offers so many possibilities for children to think and act for themselves. The adult should be available to support only as and when necessary.'

Here are some points to consider when building up a core collection of resources for small-world play:

• Give children access to block play so that they can build whatever houses they want.
• Ensure that doll's houses have good access so that children can sort and arrange furnishings and move people around to make a story. Models include the three-storey Terrace Doll's House, £99.95, from www.hope-education.co.uk; the Doll's House (three parts), £59.95, from Cosy Direct, which has a moveable wall; the Woodlands Doll's House, £151.95, from www.earlyyearsresources.co.uk, which has a detachable roof and open front; the Giant Doll's House with furniture and dolls, £370 (H 145cm), from Cosy Direct; the Green Doll's House, £191.95, from www.galt-educational.co.uk, or the Furnished Eco-House, £136.20, from www.wesco-eshop.co.uk, which also teaches children about the home, recycling, electricity, solar, wind and plants.
• Items within a doll's house need to be familiar to the children and while they do need to be to scale, they needn't be too detailed. Try the Kitchen, £13.99, made of wood and available from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk.
• Children will build stories and act out the lives of the characters contained in the houses. The characters can be stereotypical - mum, dad, granddad, grandma, child, baby - but there needs to be some thought given to ethnic diversity wherever characters appear. Try the sets of doll families - Doll Family White, Asian and Ethnic, £13.99 per set of four characters, from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk; or the Grandparents and Ethnic Grandparents, £5.95 per set of two, from Cosy Direct.
• The design of the house itself can also be varied. Help the Inuit family to catch fish and drive their huskies in the Inuit-Style House, £69.99, or have fun with a family of bugs as they play, eat and sleep in their Bug House, £74.99, both from www.reflectionsonlearning.co.uk.

CASE STUDY: THE LARK CHILDREN'S CENTRE, PLYMOUTH

The home corner at The Lark Children's Centre in Plymouth, Devon, is an area that changes on a daily basis, according to the children's interests. The core resources include a fridge, cooker, sink shelves and a small wooden table and chairs, all from Community Playthings.

Kirsty Light, deputy manager, says, 'We decide on a daily basis what we are going to put in there. At the moment, we have empty cereal boxes from home, and on the table there is a tablecloth with cups and spoons. The shelves are stocked with utensils such as whisks and spatulas and forks for scooping up pasta. The children are particularly interested in using the wicker baskets to transport items out of the home corner and into other areas of the nursery.

'Last week, a group of them were in the storytelling area peeling brussel sprouts into saucepans; this week, they have been collecting the real food items and grabbling pieces of cloth and plates and spoons and dolls and setting up picnics all over the nursery.'

On other occasions the children go on local shopping trips with the staff to buy items for the home corner. They touch and handle real fruit and vegetables and they get involved in growing vegetables which are then cooked and the children are given utensils to mash them.

Ms Light says, 'We have a wooden doll's house with an open front but we often find that the boys mainly use this to play with their dinosaurs, posting them in and out of the windows; the girls are more likely to be found in the construction area playing with train sets.'