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Teachearlyyears.com 41 EARLY YEARS ABC Find out how to have a spooky Halloween, how helicopters help literacy skills and why shells are good to play with. It’s all here…. OF THE HOPE EDUCATION - CHATTER CLOUDS Just the thing for helping children to develop their communication skills, Hope Education’s Chatter Clouds can record and play back up to 40 seconds of audio at the touch of a sensor. Featuring magnets, a built-in hook and a spring clip, each Cloud can be positioned wherever you want children to find them, and they’re even wipe clean.Visit hope-education.co.uk Heuristic play Laura England has introduced heuristic play into her setting for her 0-2 year olds and it’s gone down really well. Children are given the opportunity to explore a range of natural and found materials, including shells, tubes, tins, wooden utensils and tubs. To find out more visit bit.ly/3gUirCl How to speak child Nikky Smedley writes a regular column in Teach Early Years on How to Speak Child (see page 15). She is an inspiring international conference speaker with presentations at the Bett Show, in London, and the EU Presidency Conference on Cultural and Creative Crossovers in Riga, Latvia. Her book “Create, Perform, Teach!” is published by Jessica Kingsley. To catch up on her columns head to bit.ly/2FlQmWW Halloween It’s a time for skeletons and ghosts and all things chilling and frightening. It also means there are all kinds of ghoulish activities to be had in your classroom. So teachwire.net have created a wide range of free downloadable resources and thrown in a selection of the most fiendishly fun activities, resources and decorating ideas to get your class in the Halloween mood. Find them at bit. ly/30SJZCD Health and safety Keeping the children in their care safe from harm is every early years provider’s most important responsibility. Ensuring the wellbeing of a setting’s worth of small children can seem daunting – and it’s vital that owners, managers and their teams don’t underestimate the task and grow complacent, certainly. For more guidance go to teachwire.com and fine-tune your approach to health, safety and hygiene in the nursery at bit. ly/2DWHHtp Helicopter stories Helicopter Stories is a fresh approach to teaching PSHE and literacy skills In early years. It’s an exercise whereby children write a short story and proceed to act it out. Not only can it make the process of acquiring literacy more fun, it can also help to bring more reticent children out of their shell. Find out more at bit.ly/2DSmJvM