Sensitive educators will respond to current interests and enthusiasms brought into the setting by the children, as well as planning to offer a range of small worlds based on themes that they feel are important.
There needs to be a balance of small worlds created by practitioners and those created by the children. Educators who lovingly create beautiful miniature environments are sometimes ill-disposed towards children playing with them, fearing that they will be spoilt!
Encouraging children to build the small worlds independently or alongside a practitioner neatly avoids this problem, and offers ownership of the small world to the children themselves.
It is vital to remember that the small worlds are not static installations, but instead need to be changing and evolving in order to allow children the opportunity to learn.
Children need time to engage deeply with small-world play. Practitioners may change the theme of small-world play all too frequently, often before many children have had a turn, and when some children are just discovering the potential of the resources offered.
Changing small-world play on a weekly basis may seem good practice, to prevent children becoming overly familiar with the resources offered. But this view can be mistaken.
It is more appropriate to have an awareness of how adults can enhance and extend the children's learning, so that a small world that becomes popular with the children can be used for a variety of learning opportunities.
ENHANCEMENTS
To enhance children's small-world play:
Add writing equipment
If dinosaurs have inspired the children's small-world environment, then add dinosaur pencils and encourage the children to draw and write about what they have seen in their miniature world.
This idea could be readily adapted for various other themes, including minibeasts and African animals.
Incorporate music
Playing relevant recorded sound effects can enhance the children's play and give practitioners the opportunity to introduce varied vocabulary.
Introducing bird song to a small-world forest, or playing whale song alongside a water tray full of marine animals, can make the activity truly memorable and unusual for some children.
Use musical instruments
Work with the children to create sound effects for their stories using simple untuned percussion instruments - a task that will require high-level thinking skills as the children choose the most appropriate instruments.
(They will probably understand the term 'soundtrack'.) The children could simply choose individual instruments to represent the different characters in their story. Have two of the toys converse using only the sounds of the instruments. Great fun!
Think about colour
Provide paint swatches (available from DIY stores) with small worlds that are rich in colour (perhaps a prehistoric forest or a beach scene covered in shells). Encourage the children to talk about how many shades of colours they can find in their small world.
Make books
Keep some simple folded-paper books near the small world to encourage the children to make a permanent version of their story, through writing and/or drawing.
Use the weather!
If a small world is especially popular indoors, take it outside, so that the children can experience the impact of the weather on the environment and its inhabitants. Different weather conditions will impact in different ways, so creating opportunities to use a wider range of vocabulary than that needed inside.
Magnifiers and mirrors
If magnifying glasses are provided alongside small worlds, then children will naturally use language such as 'bigger' and 'smaller'. Incorporating mirrors into environments will help children develop the language of addition and subtraction, as they investigate what happens when they place small-world inhabitants on the reflective surface.
ICT
Use photographs of the children's play alongside their dictated text to create some books of the stories that have been told. Once completed, these make an excellent addition to the setting's book collection.
Add books Gather together reading materials related to popular small worlds. For example, if the train set seems particularly popular, add, for example: The Train Ride by June Crebbin (Walker Books, 4.99), Oi! Get Off Our Train by John Burningham (Red Fox/Random House, 5.99), a railway enthusiast's magazine and some Thomas the Tank Engine comics. Make sure that you plan for adult involvement, either through observation or through sharing the reading materials with the children.
PLANNING
You can plan to include as many children as possible in small-world play:
* Offer small-world play outdoors as well as indoors.
* Offer opportunities for small-world play to take place in many ways, in many parts of the setting, by providing a range of small mats and trays, so that individual, pairs or small groups of children can make their own small worlds.
* Plan to entice the children to small-world play by providing imaginative and original combinations of resources. Simply adding glitter to coloured sand and making it a home for the dragons will seem far more exciting than merely incorporating them in the block play.
* Ensure that small-world play is not limited to sand and water alone.
* Consider linking some small worlds to favourite books, both fiction and non-fiction, so that children can 'inhabit' the worlds that they have heard about, both real and imagined.
* Combine small-world toys with resources the children bring from home.
ORGANISATION
Keep small-world resources where children can access them easily, and, where possible, store the resources in transparent containers, so that the children can readily obtain what they need. Labelling containers with photographs of the contents can also be extremely helpful for children.
It is, of course, equally important for children to be able to put resources away independently, so ensure that dustpans and brushes are readily available.
If resources are easily accessible for the children they will be able to plan, create and reflect upon their own small worlds.
ADULT ROLE
To support children's small-world play effectively:
* Offer exciting, interesting and novel small-world play scenarios that motivate and inspire children.
* Encourage the children to build small worlds of their own, by promoting and valuing the children's independence and autonomy.
* Spend time with the children during their small-world play, observing them and interacting with sensitivity and respect. Avoid asking questions such as 'How many...? What colour is...? Which is bigger...?' Such questions merely serve to appropriate children's play for testing purposes and do nothing to develop their thinking and storymaking.
* Offer inspiration for the children's play by providing stories, non-fiction books, pictures, postcards and media texts. For example, show an episode or two of the BBC series 'Walking with Dinosaurs' if such play becomes popular.
* Plan to observe the children during their small-world play, and be prepared to act on those observations to improve and extend the experience for all learners.
AGES AND STAGES
Small-world play could, and indeed should, be offered to children beyond the age of five, and below the age of three.
Those working with under-threes need to be sensitive to the nature of young children, and not expect them to behave in the same way as their elders.
Offering opportunities for exploratory play with materials such as sterilised compost, ice and grains (among others) means that two-year-olds can share some of the linguistic opportunities available to the older children.
Two-year-olds also love to mimic and copy, so ensuring that a range of familiar toys are available - people, pets and domesticated animals, for example - will mean that they can role-play situations and create small-scale scenarios for themselves.
For older children, there can be no doubt that engaging with small-world play helps not only the development of speaking and listening skills but also makes a significant contribution to children's ability as writers.
For teachers working in Year 1, small-world play can provide an exciting and easy way to link the Foundation Stage with the world of the classroom.
On a practical note, many small worlds can be constructed on a tabletop, making them an ideal way to have purposeful play in a more formal learning environment.
CASE STUDY
A group of boys in a playgroup brought in some Thunderbird models from home to play with in the setting. The practitioner was concerned that the play was quite unproductive, as the boys simply ran around the setting 'flying' their Thunderbirds.
She suggested that they use junk modelling materials and construction equipment to create their very own Tracy Island. The boys tackled the task with great enthusiasm, worked extremely hard, and they were delighted with the result.
The practitioners were able to observe the boys playing positively and were able to identify many lines of future development that had not been possible before Tracy Island was built.
