MY FIRST FIVE YEARS TM
Everyday activities to support your pre-schooler's development
Pre-schooler
It’s all about play!
The My First Five Years approach
If you haven’t heard of us before, we at My First Five Years like to shout loudly about the importance of play! Our firm belief is that play is not in opposition to work. Play certainly can be simply joyful and fun, but play can also be a serious thing even for a young child. It can be scientific, mathematical, creative, and involves testing ideas, making connections, adapting approaches, persevering and much more.
The prevalent concerns about ‘hitting milestones’ and achieving goals within certain timescales can lead to parents feeling they need to adopt more formal and adult-directed learning approaches which tend to hurry children, even preschool age, through structured experiences, squeezing time for play – especially free play – out of their lives.
We want to reset the balance.
We know that play can be so many things and its importance cannot be underestimated. Lots of words can be used to describe play: wondrous, challenging, absorbing, exploratory, caring, evolving, quiet, boisterous, social, creative, imaginative, skilful, emotional… we could go on forever!
Watching your child will show you that their drive to play is natural and irrepressible, and bubbles to the surface in the most unlikely, and least obviously playful, situations! At this time, your child’s curiosity and need to actively explore will be high, and they now have the growing independence to widen their explorations and experience of the world, as they begin to forge relationships and build a new community outside of the home.
You might find that your child loves being outside; many of our activities support this. Playing outdoors is not only essential for your child to understand, value, enjoy and protect our natural world – it also gives them a treasure trove of unique experiences and play opportunities.
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Knowledge is power!
We know you are, absolutely, the expert when it comes to your child, but sometimes you might want to know a bit more about the science behind their development. Our activity ideas are underpinned by knowledge and research, and we give simple pointers to interesting and relevant facts about child development, so you can feel empowered to make informed choices.
Relationships are at the heart of all learning
We are sure you know that all the best learning happens in a playful, relaxed way as your child interacts with you or other people who are important to them. Family life and rich relationships are part of learning, so we have included activity ideas that can become a playful part of your whole family’s regular routine.
Again, again and again
Repetition is an important part of learning as it supports deeper thinking through giving your child the opportunity to revisit, connect and consolidate skills. We love the idea of wallowing in learning! We encourage you and your child to take it slowly and revisit activities again and again, in order to learn deeply and well.
It’s important for your child to enjoy the feeling of mastery involved in doing something they have done before, and perhaps take it a little step further. You can take time to notice and build up skills at the pace that is right for your child.
A realistic approach
Our realistic parenting approach means you won’t find Instagram-style ideas (which take hours to set up) in our books. Instead, we offer ideas and activities that you can fit into everyday life which are relevant and meaningful to you and your child.
Learning happens in lots of incidental ways, and we highlight opportunities for you to support your child’s learning through moments in your daily routine, such as packing their own bag, helping with household tasks, making the most of bedtime routines, getting dressed, preparing meals or going on a journey.
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That’s puzzling
Create a family mash-up
What you need:
• A camera or phone to take photos
• A printer
• A4 paper and card
• A glue stick
• Scissors
The steps:
• Support your child to take close-up photos of the faces of family and friends. Take a photo of your child’s face too.
• Help your child to print the photos at A4 size. If you don’t have a printer at home, you can usually print in your local library.
• Stick the photos onto sturdy card before cutting each one into around six pieces with key features on each piece. For example, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. It’s important to cut each face into the same shape segments in order for you to have interchangeable family jigsaws.
• Start with your child’s face and encourage them to try to arrange the five pieces back together.
• You can then mingle two faces together – for example, you could experiment with adding Grandad’s eyes to your child’s nose.
• Explore creating a range of family face mash-ups!
Benefits for your child:
• Encourages your child to celebrate their (and their family’s) uniqueness by talking about their individual characteristics, similarities and differences to others in a positive way.
• The set of family jigsaws cultivates a sense of silliness shared with adults, helping your child to understand shared humour.
Building on:
• You could include your children’s friends in the jigsaws, or even your pets!
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Drawing the future
Visualise your dreams
What you need:
• Paper
• Colouring pencils
The steps:
• Talk to your child about the jobs members of their family and close friends do. You might want to talk about what the person does in a day or why they do it.
• Make sure when you talk about jobs that you avoid stereotypes. This can be tricky, especially around gender, but simply changing how you refer to people when talking can have a big impact. For example, saying firefighters instead of firemen and post people instead of postmen, and making sure you don’t always refer to doctors and scientists as ‘he’ or teachers as ‘she’.
• Talk about the job you dreamed of as a child and draw a picture of yourself doing it.
• Encourage your child to draw their own picture to illustrate what they might want to do when they are older. Talk through the different choices your child might have if they’re not sure what they want to do.
• Ask about the job they have chosen and what they think it will be like.
• Remember, no job is too silly or unlikely in this game – if your child wants to be a part-time car washer and part-time popstar, embrace that dream!
Benefits for your child:
• Even in these early years, children form perceptions about certain jobs. These perceptions can be shaped or restricted by gender stereotypes and even who your child knows. This activity gives you the opportunity to explore with your child what shapes their aspirations and dreams for the future and to start to challenge stereotypes before they become things your child believes to be true.
Building on:
• Research different jobs with your child, especially ones they might not already have heard of, such as a fire fighter, a pilot, an architect, a musician or an author.
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Up, down and around Magical writing in the air
What you need:
• Two magic wands, such as painted sticks with ribbons attached
• Chalk
The steps:
Using the chalk, write your child’s name in huge letters on a wall or the ground in front of you as a point of reference for your movements.
• Explain to your child that you are going to create some magic invisible writing in the air.
• Stand facing the same direction as your child, both of you holding your wands. Ensure you can see the chalk writing.
Start with the first letter of your child’s name. Talk through the formation of the letter as you demonstrate writing it as big as possible in the air using your wand.
• Describe the starting point (always at the bottom near the ground) and the directionality of the movements. For example, if your child’s name starts with the letter ‘A’, you could say, ‘I’m starting at the bottom and going all the way up to the point at the top, now I’m coming down, down, down the other side and I’m finishing back at the bottom. Then I have to draw a line left to right across the middle’.
• Continue talking through and forming the other letters of your child’s name, encouraging your child to follow your lead with their own magic wand.
• Repeat this activity lots of times.
Benefits for your child:
• Supports your child to develop balance, coordination, flexibility and strength.
• As your child uses talk to describe their actions, they are thinking about the directionality and flow of the movements, which provides a strong foundation for writing in the future.
Building on:
• This is great to do in the dark with a torch so you see the trails of light forming the letter shapes.
• Try forming numerals or other shapes that your child is interested in.
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A new perspective
Draw under the table
What you need:
• A low table with space to lie beneath, such as a coffee table
• A large sheet of paper or card, such as the side of a large cardboard box or a roll of wallpaper lining paper
• Masking or sticky tape
• A rug, blanket or soft mat
• Crayons, colouring pencils or felt-tip pens
The steps:
• Invite your child to help you tape the paper or card to the underside of the table.
• Place the rug, mat or blanket under the table to make a soft, inviting surface to lie on.
• Lie under the table with your child, on your backs.
• Draw on the paper or card together.
Benefits for your child:
• This is a creative way to work on shoulder stability and strengthening.
• The activity develops your child’s elbow and wrist strength which encourages hand stabilisation for better pencil grasp and control.
Building on:
• Encourage your child to have a go at drawing with their toes! The trickiness of this task is a great way to highlight and celebrate how much control they have already developed in the smaller joints and muscles of their fingers and hands.
• Take the activity outside and use water to paint the underneath of a garden table.
Encourage your child to take care not to bump their head when going under the table and out again.
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Balloon keepy-uppies
Invent a homemade game
What you need:
• Some round balloons
• Plenty of space
• Two plastic fly swatters, plastic ladles or wooden spoons
• A plastic tub or laundry basket (optional)
The steps:
• Blow up a few balloons prior to the activity.
• Ensure your space is free from obstacles and then demonstrate to your child how to hold the fly swatter, ladle or spoon underneath the balloon and how to bat it up into the air.
• Practise together and see how many balloon keepy-uppies you can do, either individually with a balloon each or working as a team with one balloon.
Benefits for your child:
• Builds your child’s visual tracking as they track the balloon’s movements.
• Develops spatial awareness and balance as they position themselves to hit the balloon.
• Supports the fine motor skills of hand–eye coordination and grasp.
Building on:
• Play a game of tennis by batting the balloon back and forth between you and your child.
Your child will be looking up at the balloon rather than at their immediate surroundings, so ensure the area is free from trip hazards or obstacles. Stay with your child as they play and always supervise the use of balloons to avoid a potential choking hazard.
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Talking, listening, reading and writing
From the babbles and gestures of their babyhood, through the actions and words of toddlerhood to more complete words and sentences now, your child’s language and communication skills are always improving.
Talk is, of course, a key and growing element of your child’s communication toolkit. It’s wonderful to feel more able to understand them as they begin to share their needs, desires and experiences with more and more people.
It's important to talk to your child in the language or languages used within your family. Some children grow up speaking one language, while other children may speak two or more. Learning more than one language involves your child employing a sophisticated strategy to switch between their knowledge of each one, which promotes a wealth of linguistic knowledge and supports cognitive development.
Keep the conversation going
Plenty of experience of back-and-forth conversation, also called ‘serve-andreturn' interactions, is important to give your child a firm foundation for language. Whenever you’re interacting, make sure to give your child time to respond and then react to what they have said or done, repeating this over and over.
Not only will this build their understanding of language and support their vocabulary to grow, but it will also increase your child’s confidence by ensuring that they know their voice and opinions are important and will be considered by others.
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5
Chapter
Language
All set to go Prioritise, plan and pack
What you need:
• A small bag
• Items your child will need for a day out
The steps:
• Before going out somewhere, talk through with your child what to expect and what they might need.
• It may be helpful to break the day down into steps, talking through the sequence of the day and thinking about what might happen first, what next and what time they might come home.
• Talk to your child about the things they might need for the different stages of the day – for example, clothing, entertainment, food, drink and so on.
• Relate these items to past experiences, memories and feelings. For example, ‘Do you remember last time we were up on the hill? It was cold. What clothes can you take to keep warm?’
• When your child has identified the items they need, encourage them to help you collect the items from around the house and organise them in the bag.
Benefits for your child:
• Learning to reflect on previous experiences and memories helps your child to anticipate what they might need next time or to think about things they might do differently.
• Making decisions about what to take and packing the things that they need for a day out gives your child a sense of independence and control.
Building on:
• Encourage your child to help you to pack an overnight bag or a bag for a longer trip.
• Make a list together using pictures or words to help you remember essential items. You could tick these off as you pack them.
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I’m part of history
Make a personal timeline
What you need:
• Photos of your child, from birth until the present day
• A photo album, scrap book or a long piece of paper, such as a roll of wallpaper lining paper
• A glue stick (optional)
• A pen (optional)
The steps:
• Look at the photographs with your child and talk about the memories they spark.
• Challenge your child to organise the photos by age and place them in sequence. Point out how they have grown and changed over time.
• Help your child to place the photos sequentially in the photo album or to stick them in the scrap book. If you are using a long piece of paper, lay them out and stick them to the paper.
• You could divide the book into sections showing when your child was zero years old, one year old, two years old, three years old, four years old and so on.
• You could add captions underneath the photos, encouraging your child to tell you what they remember about each photo so you can write it down in their own words.
Benefits for your child:
• Encourages your child to revisit and explore personal experiences and memories and perhaps to talk about the feelings or emotions attached to these.
• Supports your child’s understanding of time through thinking about past and present events and linking them to the seasons and events which they experience each year.
Building on:
• Sequence other events over time using photos. For example, the journey to school or a trip out.
• Create a story map for a familiar story, sequencing the events of the story in a similar way to a comic strip.
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