Early Years

Expectations for all settings

Practitioners support children with their physical development.

What this may include/ look like

• Provide developmentally appropriate play opportunities including access to developmentally appropriate outdoor space.
• Provide opportunities to develop gross motor skills that are developmentally appropriate (e.g. practising sitting, rolling and crawling progressing to pulling up, walking and to include use of different toys such as scooters, balance beams).
• Provide opportunities to encourage children to develop their movement including to walk, run, change direction, climb and balance ensuring that they feel supported to take appropriate risks.
• Incorporate developmentally appropriate movement and dance sessions.
• Encourage children to practise developmentally appropriate fine and gross motor skills in their play.
• Include activities to develop early fine motor skills (e.g. opportunities to play with soft, squishy toys, gripping or stacking blocks progressing to cutting, threading, gluing, play doh using a range of tools).
• Let children explore using both hands until they choose what feels best - avoid forcing hand dominance too early.

For some children the following strategies will be beneficial:

• Children take part in short, daily sessions focusing on specific areas of physical development (e.g. balance, core stability, hand strength).
• Adults break movements down into small, sequenced steps and use modelling and repetition to support children to practise these.
• Provide additional opportunities for children to practise key skills (e.g. walking, climbing, jumping) in a variety of ways (e.g. outdoors, on equipment, on different surfaces).
• Adults use physical prompting or guided support where appropriate.
• Activities are adapted to be less complex (e.g. fewer obstacles) to support children in being successful.
• Opportunities for planned sensory input to support physical development (e.g. heavy work, pushing and pulling).
• Adults actively join and guide physical play to model rather than just facilitating.
• Adults provide verbal cues and modelling to support physical development (e.g. "step over", "reach up", "slow down").