Upright working surfaces promote fine motor skills. Examples of these are: vertical chalkboards; easels for painting; flannel boards; ‘lite bright’; magnet boards (or fridge); windows and mirrors; white boards, etc. Children can also make sticker pictures; do rubber ink stamping; use reusable stickers to make pictures; complete puzzles with thick knobs; use magna doodle and etch a sketch as well. The benefits for these include: having the child's wrist positioned to develop good thumb movements; they help develop good fine motor muscles.

Michael Jones explains the importance of mark making in learning to write and describes a project involving four year olds in six Luton schools that also provides pointers towards helping older children with additional learning needs.

Making a scarecrow for the garden can help develop children’s knowledge and understanding of nature, and especially growing and birds. As well as increasing their vocabulary it is a fun creative activity for all ages!

It is storytelling makeover time at the Children’s Centre at the Mall in Luton. As part of their Every Child a Talker (ECAT) project and with the support of the Early Language Consultant, Michael Jones, staff at the centre have taken on a new approach to storytelling. Practitioner, Sarah Craigs tells the tale.

The aim of the activity is to get the children involved in playing a game that requires cooperation and a lot of careful movement, and to make marks as well.

Having carried out the survey, share it with your colleagues. You might decide to make huge changes straight away, or focus on changing one aspect of the area at a time and seeing what happens. Why not ask the children what they would like? And ask yourself the big question: Do we need a book area at all?? If the answer is no, then how can children have lots of experience with books? Use this guide to learn more ideas about how to give your book corner and makeover.

How many times have you heard children being told, You?ve got to learn to share? Sharing is not an easy thing for anyone to do, and especially when you are young and someone else wants your favourite toy. Children love wrapping paper, and here?s an activity that promotes language and sharing. This is a great activity to share with groups of parents and their children. This activity is suitable for children as young as 15 months.

Sally Roberts and her colleagues in the Foundation Unit of St. Mary's Primary School in Tilbury, Essex, explored some of Michael&'s ideas during a Hippo&';s Bath day. They decided to adapt the technique for themselves, and here is Sally's account of what happened.

We felt the best way to encourage children to take a more active role in our story area was to provide a resource that could be personal to them. With this in mind we decided to provide the children with opportunity to place themselves into story situations. We also agreed that we needed to find out what makes stories exciting for children so through circle times and small groups we discussed the children’s interests – their favourite stories, favourite television characters and settings/themes of stories that interest them.

Our aim is for all children to develop as confident speakers. However some children are confident speakers at home, but need more support than others to talk in our settings. Practitioners often describe children who talk well at home, but who are silent in the setting as selectively mute/elective mute/my mute little girl/my selective mute?. They may also say, He talks well at home but chooses not to speak with us. None of these descriptions is likely to be accurate! use this guide to learn more.

How we start and end our morning or day has an important influence on children’s wellbeing and communication. These are times when parents and children are most vulnerable. How parents and children separate first thing in the morning will have a significant impact on the confidence of the adults, and on the children’s wellbeing. If both parties are happy and positive about saying goodbye to each other, and are clear about what will happen during the session, then the children will be able to relax and learn.

This document was written in the hope that parents, professionals and adults who experienced Selective mutism (SM) as children will contact me with their ideas and experiences. All children are different, and all children with SM are different too! Some respond well to support and quickly develop as confident talkers, though may remain sensitive to new people and situations. Others may need support for a longer period of time, and experience high anxiety about a range of daily and life experiences, including talking outside their home.

Write Dance is a well­ established scheme, originally developed in Holland, to develop children’s awareness of writing patterns through movement and dance. Read this resource to learn more.

Traditional tales like ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, and ‘The Three Little Pigs’ are just great for exploring many ideas that develop young children’s understanding of early maths. Because they appeal to children’s imaginations and make sense, children are able to quickly absorb the ideas within them. Through practical and imaginative play activities based on these stories we can help them understand ideas like ‘big, bigger, biggest, small, medium and large’. Read this resource to learn more.

Planning a Rhyme Day can be great fun for children and adults, and to help parents appreciate why we spend so much of our time sharing rhyming books, singing rhyming songs, and teaching children nursery rhymes (even though a lot of them seem to be a load of nonsense!)

An article about how using sign language with hearing children can help their vocabulary development and storytelling skills.

How can we influence parents so that they talk positively with their children? How can we create a calm and positive atmosphere in our setting? How can we help children to behave positively towards each other? Use this guide to learn more.

How many times have you heard children being told, You’ve got to learn to share? Sharing is not an easy thing for anyone to do, and especially when you are young and someone else wants your favourite toy. Children are also fascinated by socks, and here’s an activity that promotes language, sharing and maths too! This activity is suitable for children as young as 15 months

How we start and end our morning or day has an important influence on children’s wellbeing and communication. These are times when parents and children are most vulnerable. How parents and children separate first thing in the morning will have a significant impact on the confidence of the adults, and on the children’s wellbeing. If both parties are happy and positive about saying goodbye to each other, and are clear about what will happen during the session, then the children will be able to relax and learn.

Learning to share is an important part of social development. But it’s not easy. A young child might think, Why should I share something that I like? I am enjoying what I’ve got? If I share it, when will I get it back? This can cause worry, and lead to ‘challenging’ reactions. Equally a child might try and snatch a toy from another child. When the child refuses to part with it, the ‘snatcher’ might say to an adult, She’s not sharing!! Read this resource to learn more.

An article about Rory Hoy, award winning author, film-maker and recording artist, about life with autism.