Exploring young children’s thinking through their self-chosen activities:

Young children are expert thinkers. Intellectual search is at its most powerful during the early years when young children’s brains are primed to make sense of their experiences. The thinking part of their brain simply expands through use.

The Early Years Foundation Stage, emphasises the need to support young children’s thinking and findings from both the EPPE and REPEY state that in high quality early years settings, children improved their thinking skills. In the most effective early years settings, staff provided amongst other things, opportunities to sustain and challenge children’s thinking and to model this for children to share their thoughts with other children.

Supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the ‘Exploring young children’s thinking through their self-chosen activities’ project, has supported the development of materials, aimed at practitioners working with children in newly developed children’s centres, to develop their professional skills in supporting and extending young children’s thinking, particularly when working with vulnerable children who have not been well supported in their earliest years.

These newly developed resources build on the initial project ‘Supporting young children’s sustained shared thinking: An exploration’ and highlight ways of working with children who do not always demonstrate their thought processes. They aim to:

• raise awareness about children’s thinking when they are engaged in activities that they select for themselves and;
• suggest ways in which the practitioners might support and extend children’s interest and ideas

through critical reflection that is focused on a series of case studies where children are engaged in a self-initiated structured play with key staff supporting and extending their thoughts and ideas. The resources can also be used with parents and carers to provide them with insight into the behaviour of their children and support them in their interactions in the home.

The resource is ready for purchase from our on-line store.

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