Long-term planning
A role-play area is an important part of any early years provision and needs careful planning to ensure children are given the best possible opportunities for learning over a period of time. In settings with plenty of space, it may be possible to provide both a permanent home corner and role-play area, in which the focus is changed, say, every four to six weeks.
This month we look at general guidelines for the long-term planning of any role-play area. Next month's feature will focus specifically on planning for the 'home corner'.
Possible learning experiences
Role-play can offer children valuable opportunities to explore feelings and revisit or represent real-life experiences in a 'safe' environment. It also provides a context for the development of communication skills and imaginative 'story' play.
The learning possibilities are endless. In a well-planned role-play area, children are able to make progress towards the early learning goals across all areas of the curriculum.
In this area, children will be able to:
* explore a variety of roles including real-life jobs, story characters and roles within the family
* talk about and represent experiences or stories
* play imaginatively
* explore everyday purposes for writing and reading in a context
* use developing mathematical understanding to solve practical problems
* negotiate roles and work co-operatively
* share and take turns
* develop independence skills
* revisit and develop ideas over time.
Organisation
* Make sure that you plan role-play opportunities for both the indoor and outdoor areas.
* If appropriate, use screens to create a bay that can represent a room or an office. Screens can also be used to display photographs and posters.
* Where possible, involve children in planning and setting up the area.
* Keep a stock of basic equipment in an easily accessible place so that adults can respond spontaneously to children's interests and ideas.
* Plan for areas to be available to children over a period of time.
* Plan for adults to spend uninterrupted time in role-play areas.
Resources
The following list includes general suggestions for basic role-play equipment. Additional ideas are included in 'Medium-term planning' and in the next part of the series ('Home corner'):
* lengths of fabric
* dressing-up clothes (including hats, cloaks, uniforms)
* den frames, screens
* shop facades
* clipboards, paper, mark-making equipment
* tills and cash boxes
* telephones
* bags and purses.
Adult role
* Identify and respond to children's interests and support them in setting up or developing role-play areas.
* Observe children's play and make assessments of their learning against the stepping stones and early learning goals.
* Engage in children's imaginative and role-play where appropriate, taking on roles and sharing ideas.
* Recognise when to keep your distance and let children's play develop without direct intervention. It may still be appropriate, following observation, to offer additional resources to support the children's play.
* Ask challenging questions to extend children's thinking.
Medium-term planning
Medium-term planning identifies any additional resources that will be added to provision over a block of a few weeks. It highlights learning opportunities and activities for that time and is often linked to a 'theme'
or 'topic'. Any topic can offer rich opportunities for role play and practitioners will find a wealth of ideas reflected in the 'real world'
around them.
Spring
Role-play garden centre
Additional resources
A designated 'garden' area in the outdoor space ideally including planting beds, troughs, hanging baskets; seeds, bedding plants and bulbs (check that these are safe for children to handle); 'stall' or shop frame; plant pots, seed trays, plastic 'greenhouses', spades, trowels, rakes, garden sieves, gardening gloves, watering cans, bulb catalogues with order forms, till, wooden lolly sticks (for labelling plants), pens.
Activities
Planting and growing seeds and bulbs, caring for plants and monitoring their progress, talking about weather conditions and the effects on plants, selecting and ordering bulbs from a catalogue, 'selling and buying'
role-play, handling and exchanging money.
Vehicles
Role-play garage
Additional resources Wheeled toys (such as a scooter, bike and pedal car), wooden hollow blocks (to create a ramp and raised platform), car manuals, overalls, rags and cloths, paper towels, toy toolboxes, plastic safety goggles, road atlas, playground chalk, towing ropes, breakdown hazard signs, mobile phones, invoice pads, accounts books, headed paper, envelopes, pens, address stamp and inkpad, computer keyboard.
Activities
Making phone calls, reading and following maps, drawing routes with chalk on tarmac, collecting vehicles that have broken down, looking at how vehicles work, reading car manuals, pretending to mend vehicles and using tools for different purposes, 'test driving' vehicles, writing bills and letters.
Holidays
Role-play airport
Additional resources
Conveyor belt (row of large cardboard boxes covered with a strip of lining paper), suitcases, hold-alls, luggage trolleys, luggage labels, holiday brochures, postcards, air tickets, passports, walk-through metal detector (built with cardboard boxes), currency desk, pens, walkie-talkies, aeroplane (built with wooden blocks and planks), food trays, cups and plastic cutlery.
Activities
Discussing and negotiating roles (such as air steward, passenger and pilot), writing luggage labels, buying postcards, reading holiday brochures, talking about own experiences of holidays, imagining experiences (such as flying, or being in a hot country).
Short-term planning
It is through short-term planning that practitioners are able to respond effectively to children's individual or group interests. The key to identifying learning needs and interests is observation. To support the whole child, it is important that planning takes into account significant events at home as well as recognised interests in the setting.
Case study: Kieran
Observation
Kieran has been excited by the recent arrival of his baby brother Marcus and frequently shares his experiences of life with a new baby with adults and other children at nursery. His mother reports that Kieran is eager to help to look after the baby but keeps asking 'When can he play football with me?'
Staff response
Recognising that Marcus' birth has been a significant event for Kieran, and to help him make sense of the changes that are taking place in his life, staff decide to set up a baby clinic within the doctor's surgery role-play area. Some of the other children in the nursery have also had siblings born, and the team also targets these children's needs and interests.
Key early learning goals
Understand that people have different needs, views, cultures and beliefs, that need to be treated with respect
Find out about past and present events in their own lives, and those of their families and acquaintances
Resources
Baby and 'toddler' dolls, clothes to fit various sizes of doll and for different occasions/weather (sleep suits, snow suits, shorts, T-shirts), blankets, baby bath, sponge, towel, shampoo, hairbrush, pushchair, changing mat, nappies, cream tubs, feeding bottles, bowls and cutlery, three toy boxes (containing appropriate toys for babies, toddlers and older children), weighing scales, health record cards, photographs and books about children at various stages of development.
Activity content
* Take on the role of nurse, doctor, health visitor or parent yourself, and engage in play with the children.
* Encourage children to take on different roles within the clinic.
* Talk with the children about their own experiences, discussing memories of when they were younger and developmental differences between them and younger siblings, such as that babies crawl and eat pureed food.
* Encourage children to think about how they can support the needs of younger children and babies. Ask them to select suitable toys from the boxes for different dolls and discuss with them their reasons for the choice.
About this series
This series outlines how settings can 'build' effective long-, medium- and short-term plans around the areas of provision. The approach is not definitive, and practitioners can adapt it to suit their needs.
To implement the approach effectively, settings should:
* make planning a team effort to ensure that staff understand possible learning opportunities and how to support them.
* review their planning regularly in the light of their observations and evaluations.
The series builds on information provided in:
* 'The construction area - a guide to resourcing and supporting children's learning', Nursery World, 3 April 2003
* 'All about... Observation and assessment', Nursery World, 6 February 2003
* 'All about...Planning' Nursery World, 6 March 2003