No place like home

It is quite common these days for role-play areas to be developed with great imagination. You name it, we early years practitioners have tried it - and with great benefit to children's learning. But have you noticed how, despite your efforts to create a deep-sea environment with a shipwreck, treasure chest and marine life, the children are often to be found purposefully laying out cups and saucers, berating the dolls for bad behaviour and generally re-enacting domestic life - all from the bottom of the sea!

This tells us just how vital a homerole-play area is and how, ideally, it should be a permanent fixture alongside other, changing, imaginative scenarios. Having two role-play areas encourages children to make connections between the different environments, and so enables settings to fulfil the aims of role play as expressed in Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage (page 31): 'Children learn many skills and attitudes in well-planned role play. It encourages individual andco-operative play and gives children opportunities to express feelings, to use language, to develop literacy and numeracy skills and to learn without failure. Role play gives children the opportunity to make sense of their world.'