Understanding The World

We guide our children to make sense of the world around them. We want them to understand the physical world as well as their community. Children have frequent opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, and the environment through carefully planned topics to support existing knowledge and develop new interests. Understanding the world can be broken down into three areas.

People and communities

The link below will take you to some educational videos from the CBeebies show 'Maddies do you know?' which will support some of the topics we cover during our 2 year planning cycle.

Maddie's Do You Know?

At home you could look at photographs of members of the family during different types of family celebrations and talk about how you celebrated, any special traditions your family have and why. You could encourage your child to make and write cards for different celebrations. You could also visit different places such as farms, beaches and forest and talk about the things that they can see, hear, smell and touch.

The World

There are many different and simple ways that you can learn more about the world we live in. Here are a few examples:

Create leaf/tree rubbings
Create a self portrait out of sticks and leaves
Learn how things grow by planting a seed and taking care of it
Talking about where food comes from
Create your own bird feeder and watch which birds come to your house

There are also different ways we can look after our environment, by reducing waste recycling unwanted and unneeded things and by reducing pollution and our carbon footprint.

Here are a few things you could do at home:

Recycle old clothes, shoes and toys. Give them to people who may need them.
Recycle food waste and develop a compost bin
Recycle food packaging
Share ways in which we can save energy
Walk or cycle to nearby places and use public transport for longer journeys

Technology

The links below will take you to some games to support the areas of learning for Early Years.