As parents and teachers, we often believe that offering new activities every day is beneficial for our children’s learning. We may think it keeps them engaged, exposes them to a variety of experiences, and prevents boredom. However, research shows that constantly introducing new activities can actually hinder learning. In contrast, revisiting the same activities over-and-over
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Every student needs to know how to learn–learning strategies. And they need to know those strategies as well or better than the content. And they need ones that make sense to them. That they understand and can grow into. Don’t tell them to ‘use analogies’ because ‘research’ says so. They need smart, intelligent, useful, flexible
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Have you ever noticed your child putting teddy to bed? Giving their dolly a bath or ‘talking’ on the phone? Children love to play pretend games with their toys and often use their own experiences as part of their play, as they act out everyday situations or events. Playing in this way lets them explore
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Children are always watching and learning! So what can you do to encourage reading and writing everyday? It doesn’t have to be complicated, here are a few ideas: Shopping list Talk about what you need and the foods you like. Both write a list (even if it’s mark-making – it all counts!) before visiting the
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Pre-Covid at Chapter One we introduced a toothbrushing programme which was widely welcomed and successful. For obvious reasons during COVID this programme was stopped to ensure safety of all during the pandemic. My recent trip back to the UK, where the ChildSmile programme (Scotland) was introduced, I recently met with the paediatric dental health care
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In nursery we often talk about planning for learning. In our England nurseries the way we outline what we do is we talk about INTENT – IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACT. These three headings help us be precise in what it is we want to deliver and gives a focus on how we teach, what we teach
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Many parents ask questions about nursery life and the types of learning that goes on… so here is an interesting insight into heuristic play – what it means and why we put this into our daily programmes. Heuristic play is rooted in young children’s natural curiosity. As babies grow, they move beyond being content to
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