Being able to guide hand movements with your eyes is a vital skill, and not just in sport. Hand-writing, reading, playing with construction toys and making almost anything, requires hand-eye co-ordination. The more you can work on developing this key skill, the more confidence your pre-schooler will have in their own ability to master new …
Find it hard to believe an easel is essential? It’s actually a brilliant piece of equipment to have around, for many more reasons than painting. Easels encourage children’s wrists to bend upwards, in the same way they do for writing. Standing at an easel is also good for upper arm and shoulder strength, which in …
As a child, you remember sitting for hours, making your own fun, without the constant supervision or attention of your parents. You recall a sense of deep absorption in your games and how powerful and vivid your imagination had been during these hours spent happily at home or in the garden. But your own children …
Would you like to help your child learn some maths but don’t know where to begin? Or do you think that maths is something that happens once children start school? In early years teaching, there are two main branches of maths: number and shape. At first glance they don’t seem to have too much in …
Learning to distinguish between shapes is essentially an early form of reading. Children who can tell which shapes are which, can better differentiate between different letters when they progress on to reading. Being able to recreate shapes also helps with writing. Most letters are based on a combination of circles and squares, or lines at …
Learning to read is a long journey. It begins before your child can even speak and continues for many years after they read their first word. Here’s a quick primer on the basics. Contents: First books First books aren’t so much about learning to read or even understanding what’s printed on the pages. They’re about …
Imaginative play – any game that begins with ‘let’s pretend’, dressing-up and make-believe – is a powerful way for children to learn that our thoughts and feelings may be different from someone else’s, helping them to develop a sense of empathy and emotional intelligence. Here’s our at-a-glance guide to imaginative play for the under-fives: Contents: …
So much of your toddler’s play is about investigation and few activities are more essentially investigative than digging. Taking a spade to the earth and seeing what you can find is one of the simplest and yet most exciting exercises your child can engage in. Are there worms? What colour is the soil? What can …
You don’t have to spend long online to come across sensory play. Fill a bowl with slime and plunge your hands into it Put shaving foam into a tuff spot and draw pictures with your finger Play with rice using scoops and bowls Hmm… I thought there was more than one sense. What happened to …
Games with rules are the third of the four types of play outlined by Sara Smilansky, a developmental psychologist who studied how play develops in young children. The rest of the series is here: Functional play Constructive play Dramatic and Sociodramatic play What are games with rules? When you think of games with rules, what …