The six areas of learning of the Foundation Stage curriculum each have a number of aspects, each of which has a set of stepping stones and early learning goals. It is essential that practitioners ensure they make provision over the year for all of these, both indoors and outside.
Some provision will need to be available virtually every day (see box) while other resources should be made available in response to the children's specific interests or to link with medium- and short-term planning.
The suggestions made in this article should provide a starting point for practitioners wishing to develop a long-term overview of how to give children access to the curriculum outside. Some appear in several areas of learning because of the cross-curricular nature of most experiences, and experiences suggested for one area of learning may promote learning in other areas.
When considering the suggestions it is vital to remember that the most effective planning is informed by the observation and identification of children's needs and interests. Many ideas will come from observing the children rather than from someone else's list of suggestions.
Personal, social and emotional development This area of learning requires considerable support and modelling from adults
Dispositions and attitudes
* Open-ended resources, such as boxes, crates, tubes, guttering, shells and leaves.
* Home-made photograph albums celebrating the children's achievements, for example 'Amina and Jason made a train' or 'Look what we can do' (showing what different children can do physically).
* Provision stemming from children's interests, such as role play linked to visits in the local community.
Developing confidence and self-esteem
* Adults supporting children to try new things and talking to children about their abilities and achievements.
* Obstacle courses offering achievable challenges.
* Games using children's names.
* Parachute games.
* Mirrors displayed on walls outside - large-scale self-portraits.
Making relationships
* Adults encouraging children to work together on projects, such as building dens and structures as a group.
* Activities involving children's and staff's names, for example, 'Can you throw the ball to ...?' and adding children's names to 'Simon says'.
* Turn-taking activities such as hopscotch.
Behaviour and self-control
* Sufficient resources and experiences outdoors to provide enough choice to keep children motivated and busy - involved children tend to behave well.
* Adults trying to make possible the things that children wish to do. For example, when children build blocks high up, instead of stopping the activity, section off the area with traffic cones and put up a sign saying 'builders at work'.
* Adults encouraging children to assess risk for themselves. For example, 'Are those crates safe for you to climb on? Have you tested to see if they wobble when you touch them?'
* Children involved in reviewing and planning to improve the outdoor area, for example by saying what they like and dislike about being outside.
Self care
* Adults encouraging children to support their peers and to be as independent as possible in dressing to go outside.
* Dressing up clothes with different fastenings.
* Adults discussing clothes for different weather conditions, such as sun protection, keeping dry in snow and rain, keeping warm when it is very windy.
Sense of community
* Visits and visitors to enrich children's experience, and outdoor role play that links with the visits.
* Children and adults working together on a project, such as a mural with the artist in residence or involving parents and children in preparing a garden.
* Picnics involving food from various different cultures.
* Moving to different types of music.
Communication, language and literacy Many children, because they are more relaxed, will be more talkative outside Language for communication
* Adults introducing vocabulary and modelling talk about actions, events or observations.
* Ring games and role play where children give instructions, communicate ideas and use the language of roles.
* Signs and symbols for directions, for example in traffic play, to label resources and set up treasure trails.
* Walkie-talkies, home-made telephones.
* Adults encouraging children to talk and listen to each other and to re-enact stories outside.
Language for thinking
* Adults introducing problem-solving situations ('How can we keep teddy dry when we go out in the rain?') or talking to children about problems they have encountered ('How could you make the wall stronger?')
* Adults encouraging children to evaluate and modify their ideas.
* Open-ended experiences such as experimenting with natural and recycled materials.
* Adults encouraging children to describe, explain, sequence their ideas, give reasons, predict and hypothesise.
* Questions displayed in the outdoor area to present a challenge, such as 'Can you build a house for the three bears?' or 'Can you use the traffic cones to make an obstacle course for the bikes to ride round?'
* Adults encouraging several children to work together on a project.
* Information cards displayed around the area to promote talk and support children's learning, for example cards with information about plants, birds, trees and buildings in the community.
Linking sounds to letters
* Listening games, such as 'I hear with my little ear something that flies in the sky'.
* Listening for sounds in the environment and recording them to play sound-matching games.
* 'I spy' games.
* Treasure hunts, for example around the outside area or in the sandpit, to find items that start with particular sounds or rhyme with a word.
* Print walks to identify letters and their sounds.
* Ring games using the initial sounds of children's names, for example 'Throw the beanbag to someone whose name starts with ...'
Reading
* Environmental print walks.
* Signs and labels around the environment, such as labels on seeds or bulbs, traffic signs and outdoor rules.
* Labelled wheeled toys matched to parking bays marked with letters or whole numberplates.
* Reading materials linked to role play, such as car manuals in a garage.
* Messages chalked on blackboards or playground.
* Treasure hunts with cards giving written clues, such as pictures or symbols.
Writing and handwriting
* Making rubbings on walls, the ground and tree trunks.
* Mark-making with a range of implements, including fingers and sticks, in sand or mud.
* Scoring when playing games, for example by recording the number of skittles knocked down.
* Adults modelling mark-making, and writing and scribing for children.
* Writing linked to role play, for example writing down orders for a pavement cafe, stock for a building site, appointments in a diary and telephone messages.
Mathematical development
Counting and calculating
* Numbering wheeled vehicles and parking places.
* Role-play settings involving numbers, such as a market stall, counting and weighing fruit, and calculating prices.
* Counting actions such as jumps.
* Aiming games such as 'Ten green bottles', knocking down the bottles with beanbags, or matching and ordering the numbers on the bottles, and aiming balls or beanbags into numbered buckets.
* Scoring games (skittles and basketball).
* Washing line and pegs games, for example the children peg numbered cards in the correct sequence or play 'what's missing' (an adult takes a card away while the children are not looking).
* Collecting a prescribed number of items, such as six leaves, three shiny objects or seven brown objects.
* Making numbered football shirts.
* Finding numbers during walks (numberplates, drain covers, buses).
* Estimating how many items are missing during tidying-up time.
* Calculating how many items are needed, for example for a picnic.
* Surveys of passing traffic or birds.
* Resource boxes linked to number rhymes such as 'five green speckled frogs', containing a card with the rhyme, five masks, and a blue plastic circle for a pool with a log in the middle.
Shape, space and measure
* Shape walks or treasure hunts to find different shapes.
* Aiming at different shapes drawn on the ground or into labelled containers.
* Making patterns using shapes from the natural world, such as leaves and shells.
* Making shapes with bodies; climbing through and over shapes.
* Ramps to explore which shapes roll.
* Obstacle courses to focus on positional language.
* Fitting children or objects into boxes.
* Measuring distance with giant steps.
* Bucket scales for weighing, for example pebbles and sand.
* Comparing shapes such as the prints made by shoes.
* Pulley systems to explore lifting weights.
* Looking for patterns in nature and making patterns using natural materials.
Physical development
Movement
* Ring games.
* Balancing on a chalk line, skipping rope or balancing track.
* Streamers and wrist or ankle bells to inspire movement to music.
* 'Can you move like a ...?' games.
* Adults modelling different ways of moving.
Sense of space
* Tracks (with chalk or traffic cones) for children or wheeled toys to follow.
* Contained spaces, such as dens or cardboard boxes.
* Trails made with washing-up liquid bottles.
* Obstacle course.
* Parachute games.
* Adults discussing aspects of space with children.
Health and body awareness
* Adults discussing changes in the body after physical exercise, including the need for a rest and for appropriate clothing in different weather.
* Adults discussing safety and safety rules.
Using equipment
* Throwing, kicking and receiving games with balls, beanbags and so on.
* Targets to aim at, such as buckets or basketball nets.
* Team games.
* Large construction, using boxes, crates and a tool set.
* Woodwork.
* Equipment for children to make their own obstacle course.
Using tools and materials
* Mark-making materials.
* Weaving through plastic netting or fencing.
* Moving heavy equipment.
* Recycled materials, such as guttering, tubes or washing-up liquid bottles.
* Watering cans.
* Gardening tools.
* Sand and water resources.
