Following a recent parents' evening at Busy Bears Nursery, staff in the Butterfly Room (15 months to two years) met to reflect on parents' comments. Many of them had talked about how much their children enjoyed helping around the house with routine tasks such as laundry, baking and cleaning. So, we discussed ways in which this apparent common interest could be continued within the setting to provide our Butterfly children with continuity of focus while maximising their learning opportunities.
ACTIVITIES
We started by compiling a list of activities mentioned by the parents and then arranged these into themed experiences. The main categories and tasks mentioned and implemented in setting were as follows.
Laundry
Activities: Washing clothes, hanging them up to dry, ironing and putting the clothes away
Resources: Water trays for washing and rinsing clothes, home area dressing-up and dolls' clothes, washing powder, pegs, peg basket, clothes basket, low washing line, containers for clean clothes, toy iron, toy ironing board
Baking
Activities: Making cakes with an adult, making playdough 'pastry', washing or scrubbing vegetables and making cups of tea
Resources: Aprons, ingredients for cakes, small bowls and utensils, cake cases, access to oven away from children, ingredients for playdough 'pastry', utensils, toy oven; oven gloves, vegetables, scrubbing brushes, bowls, toy kettle, cups and teapot and access to water
Cleaning 
Activities: Sweeping floors, dusting furniture and cleaning windows
Resources: Brooms with short handles; dustpans and brushes; dusters; J cloths; aprons
Car cleaning
Activities: Washing and polishing car
Resources: Children's coveralls, wellingtons, buckets, large sponges and washing-up liquid
ORGANISATION
The resources for a specific theme were made available to children on different days to avoid confusion and to ensure that they created appropriate links with the relevant home experience.
We noticed that these activities soon became firm favourites, engaging the children for long periods of time. Their interest was clearly apparent when they eagerly took their parents straight to the area when they arrived.
SUPPORTING CHILDREN'S LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
Our records of the children's learning as they took part in these activities included comments based on the following observations.
Personal, social and emotional development
- - Taking pleasure in new skills such as washing windows and vacuuming floors
- - Enjoying the feeling of confidence that arises from a job well done
Communication, language and literacy
- - Responding eagerly to simple requests and instructions from adults
- - Developing hand control when using exciting resources, such as huge soapy sponges when washing cars
Problem-solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
- - Sorting equipment by use - for example, clothes basket, pegs and peg basket for hanging up clothes
- - Enjoying filling and emptying buckets when washing cars
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
- - Sometimes focusing their enquiries on a particular process, such as how bubbles are created in clear water by adding washing powder
- - Recognising the link between a sequence of actions they create with a similar sequence observed at home, such as making a cup of tea
Physical Development
- - Experiencing the excitement of their own mobility and setting personal physical challenges, such as trying to reach the top of the car windows to wash them
- - Creating a sequence of actions to wash an item of clothing, make a cup of tea or dust a cupboard
Creative Development
- - Responding to new experiences through their senses - for example, squeezing soapy sponges, listening to watery sounds, sniffing dry and wet sponges and observing light reflected on bubbles
- - Taking on adult roles by imitating their actions with real objects
SAFETY TIPS
- - Check for allergies before using detergent products, and keep quantities used minimal.
- - Check for dietary needs and allergies before allowing the children to handle food.
- - Use toy appliances if there is any safety concern over items such as irons, ovens and kettles.
- - Use plastic rather than china cups and teapots.
- - Strip children to nappies when they are engaged in wet, messy activities such as washing clothes.
- - Ensure that there are facilities to wipe up spills so that floors do not become too hazardous.
PARENTAL FOLLOW-UP
Parents and carers have commented about how impressed they are with their children's engagement in these activities. Many have added that they are much more involved in helping with routine tasks at home since these opportunities have been made available to them at nursery.
WHAT NEXT?
Linking home activities with nursery has been so successful in the Butterfly Room that we plan to extend this to the older children on a more challenging level - for example, by inviting parents to come in and share favourite recipes and gardening skills.
Kim Ritson is head of the Butterfly Room at Busy Bears Nursery, Durham. She shared her experiences and photographs with Jean Evans.
PENNY TASSONI: COMMENT
For generations, children were often alongside adults as they carried out daily domestic chores. From watching adults, children learned skills and were made to feel grown up. As children were part of the 'action', they had things to talk about and adults could interact with them in a fairly natural fashion.
With this in mind, it is wonderful to hear about a nursery that in some ways is stepping back in time and giving children opportunities to take part in 'real life'. It is also exciting that the nursery and parents have come together and not allowed issues around health and safety to cloud what are potentially sound adult-directed activities.
Penny Tassoni is an early years consultant and author of titles including Penny Tassoni's Practical EYFS Handbook (Heinemann)
