Early Years

Ten activities to develop fine motor skills

Learning Resources | Posted on Jul 29, 2021 | Learning Resources

Dr Amanda Gummer from the Good Play Guide has grouped fine motor skills into three areas: grasping, manipulating, and hand-eye coordination. Discover 10 hands-on activities to develop these areas.

Learn through fun outdoor play!

Playing outside is an essential part of a child's development. From making mud kitchens, to getting to know nature, learning and playing outside will help little learners form key developmental skills such as physical health & self-confidence!

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Building Brain Power with Sensory Play: A Guest post by Jackie Edwards

Laura Hutchinson Posted On Aug 31, 2017 | Early Years

Author: Jackie Edwards from Fractus LearningJackie is a mum of two and an editor, researcher and writer. One of her children is on the autism spectrum and she actively finds ways to help her daughter achieve a sense of peace and freedom. She has carried out a lot of research on the impact of sensory environments on brain development and has teamed up with Learning Resources to share ideas for creating sensory environments at home. Building Brain Power with Sensory PlayWhen you hear the words ‘squashy’, ‘oozy’, ‘scratchy’ and ‘sloppy’, you know that children are fully engaged with their senses. They’re using their hands, eyes, ears, noses and mouths to explore and make sense of the world. Just watch their fascination and concentration as they swirl their wellie-clad feed through wet mud or run cooking ingredients repeatedly through their fingers. You’re observing the power of sensory play in action - a style of play that has enormous developmental potential: it can build connections in the brain and support learning, thought and creativity. Powering up the brainFor over a century, sensory play has been valued by a host of renowned child educationalists such as Dewey and Montessori. Yet it’s only recently that we’ve discovered that sensory play is fundamental for brain development. Scientists have shown that at birth, a multitude of unprogrammed neurons in the brain are awaiting connection. Sensory experiences in early childhood fire up these connections between the neurons. The more sensory experiences, the stronger the connections and the easier it is for us to think, understand and remember.The visible fruits of sensory play

EI-5115 GeoSafari® Jr. Underwater Explorer Boat and Magnifier When a child is engaged in sensory play, not only is the brain undergoing powerful transformations but there are also very visible signs of learning in areas of language, motor skills and social development. Language skillsSensory play can encourage new ways of talking about the world. Not only does it give meaning to descriptive words like smooth and sticky, but it can also prompt further discussions. No longer is water merely just ‘wet’, it’s also ‘runny, ‘ripply’ and ‘splashy’. Motor skillsSensory experiences often demand the use of gross motor skills, such as jumping in puddles or dancing to music, or fine motor skills such as mark-making with sticks in mud or rubbing grainy sand between fingers. Both types of action will help build physical strength. Social and emotional development Besides sensory experiences initiating social interaction, they also provide the ideal setting for independent exploration, testing ideas and problem-solving. How to create sensory environments

EI-9268 Playfoam® Class Set As a parent or teacher, it is important to provide opportunities for sensory learning. Here are a few easy and cost-effective ideas:

Shadow puppets - Simply use a torch and your hands!
Vegetable printing - Slice vegetables in half to create different shape stamps
Flavoured sculpting materials - Use herbs and spices, such as cinnamon and dried mixed herbs
Coloured sand - Mix in grated chalk to give colour to sand
Rose petal perfumes - Add petals to a little water
Frozen small world - Create a mini north pole with ice and arctic figures
Clay faces on trees - Stick modelled clay faces to the trunks of trees

The sponge effect!Children really are like sponges, absorbing vast amounts of information from the stimuli around them. In fact, between birth and 3 years of age, the human brain increases to 80% of its adult size! Whilst pre-schoolers will undoubtedly benefit the most from sensory play, opportunities for development and learning in older children are still apparent. It’s therefore absolutely crucial to maintain these opportunities to enrich learning and promote fun! *For more ideas and inspiration browse our range of sensory resources!#LoveLearning

Building Brain Power with Sensory Play: A Guest post by Jackie Edwards Author: Jackie Edwards from Fractus LearningJackie is a mum of two and an editor, researcher and writer. One of her children is on the autism spectrum and she actively finds ways to help her daughter achieve a sense of peace and freedom. She has carried out a lot of research on the impact of sensory environments on brain development and has teamed up with Learning Resources to share ideas for creating sensory environments at home. Building Brain Power with Sensory PlayWhen you hear the words ‘squashy’, ‘oozy’, ‘scratchy’ and ‘sloppy’, you know that children are fully engaged with their senses. They’re using their hands, eyes, ears, noses and mouths to explore and make sense of the world. Just watch their fascination and concentration as they swirl their wellie-clad feed through wet mud or run cooking ingredients repeatedly through their fingers. You’re observing the power of sensory play in action - a style of play that has enormous developmental potential: it can build connections in the brain and support learning, thought and creativity. Powering up the brainFor over a century, sensory play has been valued by a host of renowned child educationalists such as Dewey and Montessori. Yet it’s only recently that we’ve discovered that sensory play is fundamental for brain development. Scientists have shown that at birth, a multitude of unprogrammed neurons in the brain are awaiting connection. Sensory experiences in early childhood fire up these connections between the neurons. The more sensory experiences, the stronger the connections and the easier it is for us to think, understand and remember.The visible fruits of sensory play

EI-9268 Playfoam® Class Set As a parent or teacher, it is important to provide opportunities for sensory learning. Here are a few easy and cost-effective ideas:

Shadow puppets - Simply use a torch and your hands!
Vegetable printing - Slice vegetables in half to create different shape stamps
Flavoured sculpting materials - Use herbs and spices, such as cinnamon and dried mixed herbs
Coloured sand - Mix in grated chalk to give colour to sand
Rose petal perfumes - Add petals to a little water
Frozen small world - Create a mini north pole with ice and arctic figures
Clay faces on trees - Stick modelled clay faces to the trunks of trees

Peri-hand Space: The hidden benefits of Hand Pointers A guest post by Joanna Grace

EI Editor Posted On Jan 6, 2017 | Early Years

Joanna Grace is an international sensory engagement and inclusion consultant. She is the founder of The Sensory Projects and has a personal and professional background in the world of SEN. Through her work Joanna looks to contribute to a future where people are understood in spite of their differences.

Jo tweets excerpts from research about the sensory world from @jo3grace We met Joanna at the TES SEN show 2016, the largest SEN-focused event held annually at the Business Design Centre in London. This show is designed to provide teachers, SENCOs, support staff and parents with the tools and skills to help all pupils achieve their full potential. Joanna was at the show to deliver a seminar and visited our stand on the first day. She was immediately drawn to our hand pointers and explained to us how she used them in her work. After revealing some hidden benefits we teamed up with her on this guest post to share her ideas with our readers.

A box of hand pointers arrived at my house. They were instantly tested for safety by The Sensory Projectâ€™s small assistant. I can confirm that if you beat them on chairs, cushions, stairs, floors, walls, tables and kitchen tiles they do not break! I was then treated to a rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes with two Hand Pointers (first chosen at random but then selected to be matching in colour â€“ a good little skill there, letâ€™s just say itâ€™s not so easy to point to your nose when your arm is twice as long!

That evening a secondary school maths teacher friend of mine came to dinner and I automatically lost half of the hands into her gleeful grasp. â€œOh Iâ€™m going to use these for group workâ€ she declared. I once worked as a supply teacher and in my bag of essentials I always carried a bunch of neon hand shaped fly swatters which I used to engage children in my lessons. The people holding the fly swatters were the only ones who could answer questions; once theyâ€™d answered a question they passed the fly swatter on to the next child. In this way I was able to encourage everyone to be involved in the lesson. The fly swats were great but they canâ€™t operate an interactive white board like the pointers can! My next outing with my remaining hand pointers will be to a special school where I will use them to encourage students to explore the world around them and have some fun. But beyond these tactical teaching ideas and general playfulness, there is a sensory something about these Hand Pointers that you may not know about.

In my work at The Sensory Projects I provide training to mainstream and special settings across the UK. I teach people how to useÂ sensory engagement strategies that will support the learning of their students. I tend to, for pragmatic reasons, restrict myself to seven sensory systems, very occasionally slipping into eight when my resolve weakens. I sometimes get into debates with people who argue for there being nine or eleven primarysenses but, did you know, we actually have thirty three sets of neurons that control our sensory experiences, so arguably there are thirty three senses! These Hand Pointers are ideal for developing one of these sets â€“ the peri-hand space. In your brain you have a set of peri-hand space neurons. Your peri-hand space is the space all around your hand and your hand itself. It goes to about 10 centimetres around your hand (if youâ€™re an adult, with children it will be proportionately smaller). You also have peri-head space neurons and a set of neurons dedicated to the area of space around your body. These spaces are important for our safety and our interaction with the world, it makes sense that we would evolve to have extra attention in these spaces, and that is essentially what these extra pockets of neurons are.

Here is where, it gets even more fun: at a single cell level your peri-hand space neurons are sight, sound and touch all at once! This means that, for example, when you look at something within this space your visual neurons process the information and so do your peri-hand space neurons. Extra bits of your brain get involved in the looking. It is quite amazing. So getting children to point at the words they are trying to read is a really good idea, because you are coaching them in a way that means they end up getting extra information from their brain about the symbols they are trying to decode. Now, if the single cell level information blew your brain wait for the next bit! Iâ€™d like to describe this as magic, but I donâ€™t believe that is the scientific term for it. Studies have shown that when we hold an item, such as a pen, or stick, or pointing hand, our peri-hand space neurons attend to the space around that object as well as the space around our hand. In essence that zone of extra sensory perception extends to the end of whatever we hold. So using a pointing hand to point at something on a white board that you are trying to read is a way to fractionally boost a childâ€™s ability to process that information. Knowledge like this usually only appears on programmes like QI, but knowledge is power and power should be used for good, so arm yourselves! Go out there and point at things. Use it in your own life too, donâ€™t stand there squinting at the tube map, point at it! Instruct students who arenâ€™t sure which answer to choose to point at their options as they consider them. Get some Hand Pointers, channel your inner stockphoto teacher or 1950â€™s school mistress and get pointing!

You can find out more about Joâ€™s work at The Sensory Projects#LoveLearning

Peri-hand Space: The hidden benefits of Hand Pointers A guest post by Joanna Grace

You can find out more about Joâ€™s work at The Sensory Projects#LoveLearning READ MORE

5 ways to unleash their creativity

EI Editor Posted On May 10, 2016 | Seasonal Fun

5 ways to unleash their creativity

Learning Resources Posted On Feb 5, 2016 | Early Years

The 3rd of February is National Number Day! Organised by the NSPCC, the day is a nationwide maths fundraising event for young people of all ages and is even supported by Countdown presenter and mathematician, Rachel Riley:“Number Day is a great way to get children engaged with maths, and on top of that, they’ll be raising money for the NSPCC.

Number Day

The benefits of outside learning

EI Editor Posted On Jul 8, 2014 | Early Years

My daughter ‘Squirt’ loves being outside, she’ll happily play for hours in the garden, at the beach, and she loves nothing more than a play park! She enjoys it so much; it’s easy to sneak in some fun learning activities without her even noticing she’s learning!

We all know the benefits of being outside; fresh air, exercise, vitamin D and the boosts to children’s immunity, needless to say how much extra space there is out there! Whether it’s the school playground or at home in your back garden, the activity ideas and resources are endless! My niece particularly enjoys the 'jumpoline’ (trampoline!) and we can see her coordination and balance have already improved.

Toys that require new skills, encourage the development of self-confidence and encourage exploration. I gave 'Squirt’ some Helping Hands Fine Motor Tools to use outside in her sand and water tray to improve her motor skills & build the strength in her hands. She’s learning scissor skills at nursery, so I thought the Handy Scoopers would help. Well the learning didn’t stop there! She explored the entire garden with the Handy Scoopers to see what was small enough to fit through the holes! Stones, soil, insects and flowers were all tested out and it became a little measuring activity!

This set combines four of our finest Learning Resources tools, great for children as young as 2. They’re great for encouraging exploration both inside and out.

Teachers, with the new curriculum coming into place in September, are you planning more outside learning at your education setting? We’d love to hear your ideas for taking your lessons outside!

We have some great resources for taking hands-on learning outside, and you can view the entire range of outdoor play resources on our website. Dino Construction Companyâ„¢ vehicles have been very popular with both parents and teachers for outside learning and play. They are powered by children, so not motorised or controlled by a remote. There are four different dino vehicles in the set; Wrecker the T-Rex Skid Loader, T-Top the Triceratops Bulldozer, Spike the Ankylosaurus Steam Roller and Boom the Brachiosaurus Backhoe! Each dinosaur features a range of hand-powered mechanisms and the dinosaur track treads are great for making tracks in sand or dirt!

Mummy Blogger, Mummy Bird provided us with her review of Wrecker the T-Rex Steer Loader. Not only did her son love it, but her daughter did too! Little Bird even tried out the dino vehicle helping to dig up his Nanny’s patio! The full review can be found on her blog at mummybird.com

Make the most of outside learning and get the little ones outside!