TEY-10.2

FOUR THINGS TO CONSIDER NOW ABOUT CONTINUOUS PROVISION 1 Give yourself lots of time to observe and assess your children while they are playing. Create an environment that is based on those observations and assessments for maximum impact. 2 Try and keep your Continuous Provision continuous! Children gain most benefit from CP when they can invest uninterrupted time. Let sessions run for as long as possible without a break. 3 Don’t tidy everything away. Children gain a huge amount by being able to revisit and revise the props that they use to support their play. So, at the end of a session, leave what you can and see how children will build on their learning. 4 Create a playful atmosphere (for adults and children). Although you can’t see it, hear it or touch it, the atmosphere you create in your space has a huge impact for everyone. Make your space a playful one where risk and failure are celebrated just as much as success – most of all…have fun! need to ensure that it meets the Government guidelines. I don’t think there is anything in the guidance that will be a barrier to providing rich play experiences, it is more how senior leaders interpret that guidance. This is something I talk about in my interview with the Foundation Stage Forum and Tapestry education team for their podcast series - do have a listen if you need to think about this more. SUPPORTING CHILDREN AS THEY RETURN It is important that we provide enough open-ended play opportunities to allow children to be able to play out a wide range of possible scenarios both real and imagined. We don’t know what children’s lockdown experiences might have been and, more importantly, we don’t know how they are going to process them. They probably won’t engage in a game of ‘lockdown’ in the home corner, but you might find that elements of what they are trying to process appear in other games and play. I would ensure that there are lots of resources available that encourage children to engage in small world play. Make sure the resources are open ended enough that they can use them to represent themselves and their family members, as well as fantasy creations from their imaginations. When you are creating a role-play area, a home corner is a great idea to start with as most children will have spent most of their time at home. Also make sure that you have got other open-ended resources like boxes, baskets and bricks to add to your home corner for those children who don’t want to play traditional ‘house’. Another key thing is to make lots of time for talk. Take a look at the structure of the day, is there potential for more chat? It is always really important for children to get as many opportunities to talk as they want to take. Some children will not respond well in a large group time so provide lots of different opportunities to talk in groups of different sizes. Continuous Provision is a valuable part of any early years learning environment. Done well, it produces high levels of engagement from all children which in turn promotes high levels of wellbeing. This is an essential recipe for successful learning. As children return to the routine of your setting their wellbeing must be at the forefront of everything that we do, and what better way to do it than through quality play and interaction in Continuous Provision? Alistair Bryce-Clegg is a former headteacher and now works as an education consultant, he is a leading expert in Continuous Provision. Listen to his podcast with the FSF/Tapestry education team at bit.ly/3iq5noL. Teachearlyyears.com 53