beginning, says Nancy Stewart, principal consultant at Early Learning
Consultancy.
In recent months I've noted some nurseries working with under-threes who focus only on the prime areas of learning in their planning and observations. At the other extreme, I observed a painful 20 minutes with a group of restless twos, uncomprehending while a loudly enthusiastic practitioner tried to control them as she took them through a phonics session that clearly meant nothing to any of the children.
How can we interpret the prime and specific areas of learning to help us reflect on how best to work with the youngest children? If the prime areas are particularly important for under-threes, does that mean we can just ignore the specific areas in planning and interacting with babies and toddlers? I'd argue that it's not that simple, since the two are different but need to be woven together from the beginning through experiences we offer.
IN COMMON
So why do we have the idea of prime areas? Take three babies - one born thousands of years ago to a nomadic desert tribe, one in a bustling modern city, and one in a small medieval farming village. While the circumstances of their lives are very different, they have much in common in their early learning. They all are attentive to others, finding out about themselves in relation to the people around them, and becoming attached to those who care for them.
They all begin to communicate with gestures and expressions, and tune into the language they hear around them until they soon begin to speak for themselves. And they are all discovering how they can use their bodies and senses as they move, explore and interact with space and objects around them.
What all these babies have in common are the universal areas of human development reflected in the prime areas of the EYFS. They are identified as centrally important for the youngest children because they are fundamental to everything else that they will go on to learn. These are what are called 'experience-expectant' areas of learning, because a baby is genetically primed to seek out experiences that will support development in these areas.
TIME AND CULTURE
What the babies do not have in common, though, are many things that they learn which belong to the specific time and culture they are growing up in. Some cultures have no written language at all and so young children will not develop in literacy - and their immature brains are not seeking experiences of reading.
Babies are born with an awareness of small quantities up to three and can soon compare more or less in small sets, but not all cultures have developed a system of understanding and working with ideas of larger quantities through a number system.
Even the ways we learn to represent our ideas and feelings symbolically through music, drawing or painting, sculpture or dance are shared and passed on through our particular culture. These areas are called 'experience-dependent' areas of learning, because they do not come naturally. They are dependent on specific situations a child is exposed to, and so are the EYFS specific areas.
The prime areas, in a sense, do have highest priority and, in fact, I think that this is true for children throughout the EYFS. The prime areas come first, and are the necessary base for the specific areas. A child can't begin to make sense of reading and writing if they can't understand and use language. Physical movement, awareness of the body, control and balance allow the child to be in the world as an explorer, user, watcher, doer - as a learner in all areas of learning. And feeling safe, confident and relating to others is the basis for positive experiences of all kinds.
Paying attention to the prime areas can guide us toward appropriate practice. Those two-year-olds in the phonics session were physically restrained and uncomfortable, emotionally uncomfortable and had no chance to communicate their thoughts or understand the language being used. We need to respect the fact that every activity involves the prime areas, and they should always be well supported.
At the same time, we live in a world where the cultural tools of literacy, maths, science and the arts matter. Babies and young children are surrounded by examples of these, and it's our job to introduce and share them. Reading books, singing rhymes, talking about 'one' and 'two' feet, counting the steps as we walk along, offering environments and activities that invite exploring size and shape, materials and so on - these are all examples from specific areas of learning that can be rich and exciting in their own right, and are also contexts where the prime areas can flourish.