I recently had a meeting at my 3.5 year old DDs nursery.
According to government guidelines, they are only allowed to encourage learning through play and are not allowed to ‘teach’ anything including reading or maths. However, they are aware that this is not ideal for all children and are keen to work with parents to meet the needs of individual children.
Interestingly, they had not noticed my DD could read - they said to me “oh, she knows quite a few numbers and letters…”! I had deliberately not mentioned this too much as i did not want them to start testing her too early but she’s now very confident at reading so I’m happier to get them involved. When I said, “well actually she can read quite a bit” they suddenly noticed that she’s reading all kinds of different books and were totally amazed!!
So, now they are seeming very enthusiastic and positive about working individually with all children. The manager has suggested that if parents wish to bring in maths or english books then they are happy to use these. I think this is great, and although my DD is not keen on workbooks with me, she might be more cooperative with nursery staff lol
Because she’s been quite anti-workbooks I haven’t really got any. So now I’m not sure where to start. At home we use mainly manipulatives for maths. She’s reading a range of early readers so I could send her in with one of these to read each week.
Any ideas or suggestions greatly appreciated. They are not teachers so I need to be careful what material I provide. I don’t want them to cause problems that I’ll have to then fix at home. Or should I just leave all the learning to home? I work 3 long days a week so we don’t have any opportunity for EL on these days except LMs in the mornings.
Sorry, I don’t have much to add which answers your question but just to say that I was informed about the change to the early years foundation guidelines which came into effect this September and find them absolutely baffling. I’m not sure if it’s staff interpretation of it or the actual guidelines but either way I think it spells huge problems for education in England. My daughter is due to start nursery shortly and I’m almost thinking what’s the point! I’m told she’ll learn about queueing up and having a set amount of time to eat and sitting still to eat, plus she’ll make friends. Hmmm. Although there is value in these things children are learners so to plan to hide colours, numbers, letters, counting, quantity etc from them seems to me to be a travesty. Anyway, rant over.
I have recently started using kumon books with my DD. But her favourite are roger priddy wipe clean books for handwriting practice (there are others). They are not academic so should be good for non-teachers. But the Kumon ones are ok though repetitive and not hugely exciting.
Interested to know how you get on with this as nurseries are pretty structured so I’d wonder how they will fit that into the day especially as each staff member is key worker to more than one child - up to 4 at 3+ age group
Realistically you will need to find a type of book that she can do fairly independently. Something that is repetitive in format so it’s predictable for her what is required to do. Or one that has a number of similar questions on a page so she can work through independently after getting simple instructions. This will matter less as her reading improves and she can read the instructions herself. To avoid the problem of wrong teaching, use the time to work on mastery experiences. Things that arnt hard for her but she needs practice on. Addition, subtraction and phonics activities are a good choice.
Also try puzzle or critical thinking books. And mazes and handwriting are good choices too. For fine motor look for books that include stickers.
I would also send in a more challenging book that they can work through with her slowly when they have time to do so. It is fairly likely that there will be a couple of kids who could work with her close to her level, perhaps not in reading but maybe in math and phonics or science.
Suggesting specific books wont work as you will need to see them but try a kumon book for math and see how she likes it.