The Yellow Door Blog

Moving forward intergenerationally: Growing together while being apart

Moving forward intergenerationally

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic there had been a real growth in the practice of intergenerational learning, with many early years providers developing beneficial partnerships with elder care settings in their community. The evidence-based benefits include improvements in children’s speech and language skills, confidence, well-being and self-esteem. With results like these, it is very important that we maintain contact between our children and the older adult community during this period, and that we develop new strategies for them to communicate meaningfully with each other. In this way we will not only keep the connections that we have made, we will also continue to expand the important work of intergenerational learning and build increasingly connected communities.

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What is maths mastery in the Early Years?

How do you know when a child has mastered something? When a young child is learning to walk, we would not say they have mastered walking when they take their first wobbly step. We would say ‘mastery of walking’ is when they can do it forwards, backwards, uphill, when tired, around objects, on different surfaces and holding someone’s hand. It is the same when mastering an aspect of mathematics. A child has mastered counting to ten when they have a deep understanding of the numbers to ten. This means that they understand the sequence (order), quantities, properties and relationships between numbers 0–10, and they can play around with these and use them in different contexts. It takes time to develop depth of understanding and it is important that children are provided with the time and resources to explore and enjoy number.

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Top Picks – Letters and Sounds

This range of multisensory resources offer engaging ways to support and encourage pre-reading skills. Children will want to get hands-on with letters and their sounds as they explore these tactile resources, interactive apps.

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The importance of maintaining intergenerational connections

I read a very interesting article the other day that challenged the use of the term ‘social distancing’ to describe our relationships with others outside our household during the current coronavirus pandemic. The article maintained that the term that should have been used by Government was ‘spatial distancing’ because the aim is not to distance ourselves socially from people but to distance ourselves physically from them in order to avoid putting ourselves at risk.

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Top Picks for – Early Maths

This range of maths resources has been selected with parents in mind, as they play and learn at home with their children. They all work well for one-to-one learning and are designed to be taken outdoors too!

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Self-regulation: the basics

What is self-regulation?

Self-regulation is the means by which we control our responses to a situation. It involves understanding our emotions and developing strategies to manage them. It also incorporates being able to think a problem through and plan how to approach it.

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Finding meaning in mud

Creating space for a mud kitchen in your setting will have a significant impact on the learning of the children in your care. Here’s our 10 marvelous reasons for muddy play!

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The wonder of rhyme!

Why rhymes and songs are so important in the early years

Nursery rhymes and songs are wonderful! Not just because they are fun and engaging for young children, but because they can make a real difference to children’s language and literacy. Research suggests that children who have a good understanding of rhyme do better in their literacy than children who have poor skills in this area.

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Bringing in the Harvest!

In the villages around Cambridge – Yellow Door’s home, residents know harvest is happening when they hear tractors rumble by, see farmers putting their combine harvesters to work, and haystacks appearing in the fields. The fruit and vegetable stalls in the city market fill with autumnal produce: a celebration of hedgerows, orchards and fields.

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