50 Fantastic Ideas For Promoting Independence

The desire to be independent is a natural part of child development and when children feel safe and secure within their environment they tend to embrace it. We can help out children to develop a sense of independence by encouraging them to make simple choices within their everyday life. The degree of independence that children can achieve is often determined by their age and level of skill, but also their self confidence. The more opportunities children have to be independent, the more their self confidence will grow and the more success they will enjoy. This inspring new book contains 50 simple, highly effective and fun ideas for helping children to embrace and develop this natural part of child development.

The 50 Fantastic Things series is a no nonsense, ideas bank .no frills, just 50 examples of great ideas already in practice!

The tuff tray is a staple resource that is often abandoned or underused in early years settings. However, when used effectively, a tuff tray can enhance a child's learning through its versatile usage, such as messy play or as enhancements to support themes and ideas that are being explored. A simple tuff tray provocation can offer many learning opportunities to help a child progress and develop, as its sensory play approach promotes open-ended investigations and problem solving. 50 Fantastic Ideas for Tuff Trays is packed full of exciting activities that are not only simple and easy to prepare and manage, but that also use materials and tools found in most settings and at very low cost. With ideas for tuff trays that support books, promote mathematics and are ideal for celebrations and festivals, this book creates inviting opportunities for learning objectives to be met in an exciting and creative way.

Many practitioners are under pressure to deliver effective outdoor learning experiences for all children. Current resources are aimed at academic studies or families - this book is an inspirational and accessible resource for practitioners. A starting point for outdoor activities that really engage, encourage and develop children.

Children are naturally drawn to mark-making. Long before they pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, they will experiment with making marks using their own bodies as well as various found objects that they come across in day-to-day life. By collecting together a whole host of ideas for different mark-making utensils, as well as exploring numerous substances and surfaces that children can mark-make on and in, this book supports both individual and group mark-making.

Important dates and occasions are often marked with a variety of celebrations and festivals. These occasions are also important markers for children in the passing of time and repeated experience. In Early Years education the best time to talk about a celebration or festival is often after it has occurred rather than before it happens. This is because many young children don't have a strong memory or understanding of something that occurred a year ago. So the closer they are to the experience, the richer their learning can be. In this colourful new book by Alistair Bryce-Clegg there are activities that cover: Christmas Diwali Easter Hanukkah Chinese New Year Halloween Bonfire Night Each activity encourages the children to learn about a particular celebration or festival and also to acquire new skills or techniques. Each of these skills and techniques can be taught on their own, or linked to other activity ideas that you (or the children) might have. The list of celebrations and festivals that are covered is by no means exhaustive, but the activities are flexible enough to allow practitioners to keep their core content and apply a different theme. They are limited only by your imagination...!

If children are not interested or motivated by what they have been asked to write about, you can be sure that any writing you do get will be rushed, short and a bit half-hearted. In 50 Fantastic Ideas for Early Writing Prompts, Alistair Bryce-Clegg offers a collection of all of his favourite ideas and inspirations that have motivated the children he works with to pick up their pencils and get scribbling!

Outdoors is a great space to enhance and extend children's learning. There are lots of children who have a natural affinity with the outdoors and use it as their preferred learning space. As adults supporting children's learning, it is important to support the investigation of their outdoor environment, but also that learning is taken into those spaces and delivered to children in the most engaging way that it can be. What you can (almost) always guarantee is children's enthusiasm to take their learning outdoors, what you can't always guarantee is the weather! In 50 Fantastic Ideas for Outdoor All Year Round Alistair has created 50 ideas that will get children and practitioners outside and learning come rain, snow, wind or sunshine! All of the activities have got their own central skill that can then be adapted to fit the interests of the children or each setting's own particular outdoor environment. So, whether your setting's outdoor space is a back garden, a small yard or large playground there will be activities that can be used and that will inspire young learners.