Promoting a love of reading is of great importance in our nursery. Enhancements are often added to the environment that relate to the books we share. They create opportunities for children to discuss the stories and gain a deeper understanding of them, as well as providing engaging and interesting ways to develop their skills. Here are some examples:
Iggy Peck Architect
This book by Andrea Beaty, and the others in her series, can provide children with interesting new aspirations. While sharing the story we talked about how an architect designs buildings. Outside in the building area, an ‘Iggy Peck Architect’ table was added with a copy of the book, an authentic toolbox, tape measures, builder’s hats and jackets, and squared paper like we saw Iggy use in the story. Children set to work creating their designs before using the continuous provision equipment in and around our construction shed to make their buildings or bridges. This links to both the ‘Playing and Exploring’ and ‘Active Learning’ characteristics of effective learning. They were learning to ‘Plan and think ahead about how they will explore or play with objects’, and they demonstrated they could ‘Keep on trying when things are difficult’ (Development Matters). It also encouraged children to discuss the story and characters as some children acted out being the teacher and students in Iggy’s class.
You Choose
One of my favourite books to use, adaptable across many age groups, by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodheart. Children enjoy expressing their preferences and this gives excellent opportunities for discussion and vocabulary development. I used the pages themselves as enhancements, putting copies around the environment for children to discuss together and to give ideas for their play. The page that has the different kinds of food to choose from was put near the malleable equipment with some paper plates to encourage children to choose and make their favourite food. The page with a range of homes to choose from was put in the construction area and it inspired some amazing builds, the castle being a particular favourite. I set up a ‘You Choose’ table with several pages from the book and a special wheel where children could choose an outfit. The wheel was made using a fidget spinner, some cardboard and a glue gun. It was very popular and caused lots of descriptive language and giggles.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The children had been enjoying reading this and requested it often. The home corner was enhanced one day with three different sized chairs, bowls, bears and some porridge oats. This led to some different role play in the home corner to usual, and lots of language relating to the story was observed. ‘Someone’s broken my chair,’ a child said, laying the smallest chair on the floor. Children used the hatsin the home corner to pretend to be the characters. ‘Let’s have some porridge. I’m going to put some sugar in!’ one child said as he sprinkled some small wooden discs in. The children enjoyed experimenting with pouring the oats, making comparisons of the objects using size-related language. We always display the books themselves in the environment near the enhancements so the children have them to hand, as they often decide to take another look.
NON-FICTION BOOKS
Under ‘Playing and Exploring’, Development Mattersstates that practitioners should ‘provide appropriate non-fiction books… to help them follow their interests’. A book display table, including a range of non-fiction texts, was added next to the cars in the small-world area, as staff had noticed that children were showing lots of interest in looking at the different types of toy cars we had. The children found it an exciting experience to share the new books together, looking at the photographs of a range of different real cars. Some children described the cars on the pages and made links to their toy cars. ‘This car is shiny and blue. It looks like this one!’ a child said holding up a blue toy car from the basket. The books inspired some children to draw pictures of the cars that they liked.
SEE ALSO
- ‘A is for authentic objects’, the first in this series, for more on what authentic objects are and how they should be used
Amy Jackson is EYFS specialist leader of education and teacher at Ormiston Herman Academy, Gorleston