Introduction
I believe that creating an inclusive and enabling environment is essential in promoting high standards of early years’ education. My mission statement within my practise is to encourage children to have freedom to make informed choices and take controlled risks. I believe that allowing children to have the freedom to explore is vital as it allows them to develop their personality, curiosity, imagination, language and social skills. These are all skills that will help them to create their own understanding of a very complex world. I believe that within early years we need to foster a love for learning and exploration as when children reach formal schooling, it becomes more focused on meeting targets and less focused on allowing the children time to play and explore. I feel that within early years it is very important to be able to allow children the freedom to play and explore in order to make sense of the world around them. I believe that children need to be provided with plenty of opportunities to engage in messy play as well as being provided with outdoor play opportunities. In an ideal world, I would love to create a setting that remains child led, allowing them to explore fully and engage in plenty of meaningful play opportunities without being restricted by government targets and structured day to day routines.
Play
I believe that play should be an essential part of every child’s life. Promoting free choice and allowing the children to engage in free-flow between indoor and outdoor is something that I strongly believe will benefit every child. I feel that this allows the children to be able to develop at their own pace, building confidence. I think that children should be given responsibility to be in control of their own development, allowing them to gain independence.
Roberts (2006), supports this, stating that free flow play is beneficial to allow children to combine skills, knowledge and experiences in order to develop without too much adult interference. Roberts (2006) states the importance of practitioners standing back and simply observing children during free – flow play. This is often a time that they are comfortable and relaxed giving practitioners a deeper insight into the child to allow them to support them better. Documents such as the United Nations Convention of Child Rights (United Nations, 1989) further support this, stating the value of children’s freedom to make choices and to have time to themselves. However, Wood (2014) argues that in reality, as much as we try to follow children’s interests in planning and to give them as much free choice as possible, the free choice is always controlled by the practitioners personal views and values by controlling continuous provision, layout of the setting, and defining areas of play. This implies that we are not allowing children complete free choice but scaffolding them and interrupting their play. Tzwo (2007) takes into account both of these viewpoints, arguing that children need adult support as well as free choice to develop. Markstrom and Hallden (2009) argue that the structure and constraints of early years’ education interrupt children’s play and factors such as time, budget, resource availability, staffing and meeting government requirements mean that providing children with complete free choice is impossible. Practitioners are constantly being pressured to “tick boxes” to meet criteria instead of just allowing children to play and develop at their own rate.
In my own experience, I have found that regular structured events such as snack time and dinner time often interrupt a child’s play. For example, in my setting, child K was playing with the trains on the carpet, he was really engaged and focused on building his train track, but dinner time was approaching, so staff had to interrupt his play in order to get tidied up and get ready for dinner. This interrupted child K’s play and his focus on that activity was lost. In my opinion, a child’s play should never be interrupted as their play is invaluable in building so many skills, such as social skills, confidence and language skills. In an idealistic setting, I think it would be more beneficial to have a flexible routine, for example, having a rolling snack so that the children can go and have snack at a time that is right for them. However in reality, due to many of the time restraints and staffing restraints within the early years, this is not always possible.
I like the idea of creating clearly defined areas in a setting, allowing a range of different types of play as I feel that it is important to allow children to develop in all areas. I think that it is important for children to maintain a balance of free choice and adult led/focused activities, because without focused activities there are certain skills that are hard to teach such as using scissors. I think it is very important to have an area or display board which is purely about the children in the setting, their likes and dislikes and perhaps a photo of each of them. This would make the learning more personalised and would mean that staff would develop a much deeper understanding of each child in their care.
Hedges (2010) criticises the idea that adults act upon children’s interests, arguing that adults may misunderstand a child’s interest and understand it through shallow interpretations. Carr (2008) supports this and says that adults tend to assume that children are interested in the things that they engage with in the setting, however argues that this may not necessarily be a true reflect, as the resources may be limited. However, Drake (2009) argues against this and argues that interests of children in setting are often sparked by the provision available and through the play of others, allowing them to become interested in things that they have never experienced at home.
I feel that it is important within an early years setting, to be able to allow children to create positive play experiences, as many children do not get this at home. This is something that I follow within my own practice. I think that it is very important for practitioners to get down on the children’s level and play alongside them, following their lead and following the child’s interests. I work very closely with a 2 year old girl who is currently going through some challenging times; as a result she has become very quiet and withdrawn. In order to support her, I am making sure that I spend time playing with her and following her interests to provide her with a safe place to just play. Children often spend a significant amount of time in an early years setting, so therefore, it is important to be able to provide a safe place for them to play.
I would love to be able to create a setting that very much resembles a “home” environment including comfortable, cosy areas for children to relax, as well as places that children can engage in lots of messy and creative play to challenge their thinking as well as having lots of outdoor space. I think that messy play in one of the most important experiences that a child can have in early years. I feel that messy play is particularly important for babies as it allows them to explore and is not restrictive. Moyles (2010) argues that babies need to engage with messy play as they primarily explore through their senses and messy play allows them to be exposed to sensory stimulation. Forbes (2004) further supports this and argues that sensory play encourages babies to use their own movement to explore the texture, temperature and form of a substance.
I think that messy play allows a child to really be able to explore and to allow them to be creative, imaginative and to develop their language and is therefore very important to aid their development and to allow them to gain confidence. Parents however may disagree with me, arguing that their children’s clothes get ruined through messy play and that it creates excessive amounts of washing for them to do. Duffy (2007), argues that parents are often confused as to why their children are being allow to engage in messy play that is often discouraged at home and that they therefore often show unwillingness to allow their child to participate in messy play activities. Duffy (2007), says that the best way to address this as a practitioner is to educate and involve the parents to allow them to see how their child will benefit from messy play. Messy play often has connotations of being muddled and confusing with no clear end product, which leads to a view that it is unimportant and undervalued. Forbes (2004) argues that the term “messy” is demeaning to this type of sensory play and leads to misunderstanding of the benefits behind it. Therefore, by educating staff, parents and other professionals, we can begin to display messy play in a positive way, allowing people to understand the benefits for the children (Duffy, 2007).
Hobart and Frakel (2005), highlight that messy play allows children to benefit from social skills, such as turn taking and sharing, as well as providing them with enjoyment and independence. It is noted that messy play, also provides children with fine motor skills to enhance muscle development as well as stimulating their minds and providing an excellent tool to develop language and communication skills. Barnett (2016) further supports this, arguing that messy play has particular benefits to children who speak little English. In my own experience, I have been working closely with a Polish child, who speaks very little English. I have noticed when engaged in messy play, he appears to use language, both English and Polish at a much quicker rate, as he is engaged and interested and will describe the colours and textures. Duffy (2007), further supports this, saying that children with SEN and EAL needs, benefit from messy play, as it requires them to use no words to be able to play alongside their peers.
Inclusion
Ofsted define inclusion in terms of creating a secure, teaching environment in which every child matters and every child feels valued and supported (DfES, 2001). Often, children are not support at home, so it is becoming increasingly important to create a secure and stable environment that suits every child in the setting. Villa and Thousand (2005) explore the legal definition of “an inclusive education” which they define as the least restrictive environment to ensure that all are valued and supported.
I believe that creating an inclusive environment means that every single child should be valued, cared for and supported in order to help them to progress regardless of physical barriers, language barriers or abilities. I think that a setting should adapt the setting and train staff in order to suit the individual and best support the child. I currently work with a 2 year old (child A) in my own setting who is paralyzed from the waist down as well as having other complex medical needs. When he started in the setting, we had to go through a variety of procedures in order to make sure that the setting is fully accessible for him. We also had to make sure that staff went on the appropriate moving and handling training in order to be able to use the equipment that he requires. We have had a range of different agencies, such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy as well as moving and handling specialists come into the setting to train staff as well as staff being send away to moving and handling training courses in order to ensure that the practitioners dealing with child A are adequately trained. Clark and Walker (2007) highlight that childcare practitioners qualifications used to be very low but recent government legislation has led to improved standards and therefore higher qualities of training and qualifications required for early years’ workers. Without the high quality of training, staff would not be adequately trained to provide child A with high quality of inclusive, invidual care.
The Warnock Report (DES, 1978), led to many children with special educational needs becoming more integrated into the main stream education system and picked up a flaw that the government lacks strategy and vision to provide adequate care for SEN children. Following on from this idea, the SEN, Code of Practise (DfES, 2001) developed clear advice for settings based on including children, parents and practitioners in the journey to allow mainstream settings to become inclusive. My setting is a mainstream setting and we follow advice from the SEN code of practise daily in order to allow us to be able to cater for a range of different children, including child A as mentioned above who requires high levels of care and training. This document has allowed early years’ settings, to be able to have the knowledge and skills in order to be able to adapt their settings in order to comply with the Ofsted definition of “an inclusive setting” which has ultimately led to higher standards of care and education within the early years. Early Education, in particular when working with children with SEN needs has become more focused on the individual child. I believe that within early years it is important to be able to allow all children to access main stream early years education. I think that children with SEN needs will benefit from being given opportunities to play and interact with a wide range of children with differing abilities. I think that it is very important to allow all children to be able to positively notice physical differences between them and their peers in order to help early years’ practitioners to educate them into becoming accepting and inclusive adults.
Tayler and Price (2016) highlight the influence of the whole setting ethos in creating an emphasis on inclusive practice. They state that the most effective and inclusive settings have leaders which establish a positive environment and that hold staff accountable for creating practises that promote equalities and inclusion. I think that an effective leader is one that values all staff and makes them feel that they are listened to, encouraging them to work as a team. In a previous setting that I worked in, the manager failed to listen to staff, making them feel like they were not valued. This significantly impacted on the whole team performance.
I believe that it is very important in allowing parents to see the philosophy and practises behind a setting and to understand that every child will be supported and valued in the setting. I feel that if a setting is honest with parents from the very start and clearly states the settings philosophy through a vision statement, then parents are more likely to get involved and have a better relationship with practitioners, leading to a higher standard of early years’ education through better partnership working. Tayler and Price (2016), argue that when parents are looking for a setting that would support their child, they need to find very clear signals in the setting vision statement, it is no good simply assuming that a parent will see good inclusive practices. My current setting’s vision statement makes it very clear to parents that we follow an inclusive philosophy by using strong words such as “all” “families” and “communities” to allow that parents to feel that both them and their child will be valued and included as part of a community.
EYFS
The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum (EYFS) enables setting to be able to provide high standards of care for young children and provides a clear, common framework for all practitioners to use to monitor, plan, track, observe and assess children’s progress within the early years (Beckley, et al 2009). Sylva et al (2004), argues that good quality pre-school experiences support children with their social and emotional development and this particularly benefits those from a disadvantaged background. I have seen the impact that receiving high quality care can have for a number of children that perhaps do not receive high quality care at home. For example, I worked very closely with child M and child L, brother and sister, they often came into setting unclean and hungry, I would provide the children with breakfast when they entered the setting and would put them in clean, dry clothes, I begun to work closely with mum in order to support her to provide better care at home. Following the EYFS allowed me to think about many different areas of their development and allowed me to see the link that meeting basic needs would have on other areas of development, for example, social, emotional and physical. I saw dramatic improvement for the two children during the 2 years that they attending the setting and through tracking their progress, following the guidance of the EYFS, I was able to show how they had progressed in each of the different areas and see how these areas affected each other.
The ever-changing nature of society and of the early years’ sector may mean that the EYFS becomes outdated quickly. Baldock et al (2009) describes early years’ policy as a social construct, depending on the recent trends and dominant viewpoints of the time that it was constructed. The early years’ sector is every changing and the EYFS needs to keep up with those changes in order to provide an effective early years’ curriculum. For example, our recent society has become digital orientated and young children are increasingly being provided with tablets, computers and other electronic devices and less likely to be able to experience simple pop up or mechanical toys. Whilst there is still a section of the EYFS allowing the assessment of a child’s interest and competency with technology, this contains statements such as “shows an interest in technology toys with knobs or pulleys” and “completes a simple programme on the computer” (DfE, 2014). Within the current society perhaps these could be seen as outdated as children may not have the access to toys with knobs and pulleys or computers and instead are much more likely to have access to touch screen tablets. I think that it is very important to try and make assessment strategies and early years curriculums reflect on the current society as much as possible to allow us to be able to tailor early years education to suit the needs of all children. We need to be able to try and make early years education as relatable as possible in order to allow the children to adapt and grown into an ever-changing society.
Planning
I believe that is important to plan exciting opportunities, following the children’s interests. This is much more likely to encourage them to gain confidence and develop. The Reggio Emilia approach supports this idea, focusing on the child at the centre of planning, observations and assessments. This approach argues that a child is more likely to develop and engage in activities if they have expressed an interest in it (Early Education, 2006). Bruce (2006) further supports this, arguing that if a child is interested in something, then they are likely to be happy and engaged, therefore getting more out of the activity. However, Chesworth (2016) criticises this, arguing that we can never fully plan for the interests of a child, especially for children who cannot communicate, as adults often tend to make assumptions of what children should be interested in rather than what they are actually interested in.
I think that as practitioners, we should not only be acting on interests that we observe children engage in in setting, but we should be conversing with parents to find out the things they enjoy at home. Parents are the people that understand the child best, so therefore, I think that it is important to try and involve parents, practitioners and the child in the process of planning so that provision can be tailored to the needs and interests of the individual children. Drake (2006) argues that as practitioners, we should acknowledge that a child’s parents are their first and most influential educators, therefore they should be included in the planning, through telling practitioners of activities that there child has been enjoying. However, in my own experiences, I have come across parents who simply are not interested in communicating with settings. This is a barrier that many practitioners face. Moyles (1989) argues that the only way to try and allow parents to understand the early years is by providing sessions that provide hands on experiences so that they can see the benefits for themselves.
In my opinion, planning should be in place to enhance the continuous provision that is already in place. Drake (2009) argues that provision should be planned so that children have a range of activities on offer and should remain constant so that children have chance to revisit and adapt their work. I think that planning should list the activities that practitioners put out to support a certain child’s next steps or to follow a specific interest and should remain constant over a week, adding and changing things according to their interests. I think that the best way to implement this would be to ensure that child’s initials are included on the planning along with their next step. This will make it clear why that activity has been put out. It will also allow all staff to be able to made suitable observations that feed into the development journeys. Sheridan (2004) argues that observations are crucial in providing practitioners with a full understanding of the child and that these must feed into planning and assessment in order to create a full picture of the child.
Transition to school
Despite early years’ education having a strong focus on play based learning, when they begin formal schooling at aged 4, the focus becomes much more about sitting down and learning and the playfulness element of early years becomes lost in a sea of assessments and meeting formal targets. I believe that children should be allowed to engage in play based experiences right up until the age of 7, as children are able to gain so many invaluable skills from play based learning. Margetts (2007) argues that the time between ages 5 and 6 is one of the most important stages of development for a child where they gain independence, responsibility and start to form influential peer relationships. She therefore argues that introducing formal schooling at aged 4 can be detrimental to a child’s learning as a child needs to be in a play based environment until the age of 6 (Margetts 2007). Rutter and Rutter (1992), support this, arguing that there is a big step between early years and formal schooling and some children adapt to this change much more quickly than other children.
In my opinion, transition should be made as easy as possible as it is often a stressful time for children as well as for parents. I believe that settings should support children and parents with these transitions, by organizing visits to the school as well as equipping the child with pictures and information about the new school, the class they might be in and the uniform that they are going to be wearing. This should help to slowly ease the child into the transition into formal schooling, helping them to settle better.
I think settings should be providing schools with adequate information and assessment about the child, so the school can get to know the child and be able to work from previous next steps. By having adequate information about a child before they go to school, the school can begin to put strategies in place to support the child as they start the setting. Drake (2006) supports this and argues that it is very important for staff to maintain strong links with the schools and to be able to support the child within the transition. She argues that settings should be sending learning summaries with supporting evidence as well as personal information about the child, perhaps with photos so that the school can have a deeper knowledge and understanding of the child, before they arrive (Drake, 2006). This would be especially useful for foundation stage 2 teachers who are receiving an influx of children in one go as it would give them an understanding of where each child is developmentally and how they can best support them. I have recently developed a new transition formwork to send to schools to support the child in transition and to help to build a better relationship with the schools. I feel that this has helped us to work with the school to provide smooth transitions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would aim to create an environment which enables all children to be able to succeed and to develop. I would aim to create a setting that promotes and encourages the importance of play. I believe that play is the most important aspect of early years that is often discouraged when children reach formal schooling. Therefore children should be encourage to spend as much time engaging with new and exciting play opportunities within early years. I particularly believe that messy play has massive benefits to children in allowing them to develop confidence, language and fine motor skills. I think that messy play is a particular benefit for babies and that they should be provided with lots of opportunities to engage in messy play on the floor to provide non-walking babies the opportunities to engage with it too. I also believe that aspects such as planning and the early years’ foundation stage curriculum are also beneficial to be able to create an enabling and engaging environment within early years. In an idealistic setting, planning should be child led and follow the children’s interests as much as possible. I think that by following a child’s lead, they are much more likely to be interested and engaged which will benefit their development in the long run.
Reference List
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