Let's build a CP area

Let’s now explore building a provision area using aspects from an example curriculum and culture. So, to begin with, your provision areas/zones help you to deliver on some aspects of your curriculum, not all of it. There simple is no way to do that.

Example curriculum:

We have a group of children at this school nursery who have poor fine motor control. We want to develop this.

We also want to develop an understanding of materials, mathematical capacity and language associated with it and a general broad range of vocabulary and language structures.

Example culture:

Our school serves an inner-city area with limited life experiences. Our children have a range of skills and knowledge associated with the kitchen and the tools they’d find in there due to spending much of their day there with relatives after nursery.

With this in mind I want to create a tuff spot tray area. This will fulfil the needs of all areas of my culture and curriculum.

Step 1:

 Source your tuff spot. Think about whether you can have a table, a stand or if this is going to go on the floor. Take some time to step back into your culture and curriculum and think if standing is something you would like to develop (gross motor skills, stamina!).

Step 2:

Build up the tools you’re going to provide in this space. You could of course just grab things out every day to place around the table. But doing this will remove the chances for children to develop depth in understanding around the resources in situ.

Instead, let’s source a range of tools that you know the children are already familiar with. Delve into the culture of your children and think about what they use at home. Source a range, ideally a range of materials (plastic, metal and wood etc.)

Important note: Plastic SHOULD be included as it’s a real material from our world, more on that in the future.

Step 3:

These tools should be staying out continuously, so choose a method that allows children to access them independently and continuously. You could go for hooks around a table, baskets underneath or boxes on shelves. Whatever works for you. You can lean into your aesthetics here and choose baskets/boxes made from wood etc. (More on baskets and boxes in a future post.)

You could stop there. In fact, most people do. But I want to take you a little deeper and consider what you’re putting into the tray and how we can use the continuous provision to develop additional skills.

Optional Step 4:

 You can provide a single resource on the first day e.g. Custard powder. Over the day you notice that children talk a lot about the material and make links between their experiences and previous ones.

So, the next day you choose to model getting some shaving foam off the shelf and add to the custard. Suddenly we’re learning more about custard powder, our knowledge is deepening!

But wait, the following day you model getting something different down to add to the custard power, Basil seeds. EVEN MOR DEPTH!

So, step 4 is providing a shelving unit that contains a series of materials and textures. These can be fully child-accessed, or you can ask the children to select them, but this gives children the opportunity to choose and therefore deepen their own learning.

Sometimes it doesn’t go right…

 Tuff spot activities are becoming higher stakes lately. A lot more negativity is around about them than ever before. The most important thing is that learning happens in the tuff spot. I would always recommend my clients move away from attractive set ups where the learning comes secondary (such as in this photo). But I’ve been there myself, it’s not always easy to get this right.