EYFS Tips: Supporting Children’s Understanding Of The World

Implementing The EYFS Framework: Fostering Understanding Of The World 

“Understanding the World” is one of the seven areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, and is split into three main sections:

1. People and communities – this means looking at people from all different communities, starting with their own family and expanding out to include local, national and global situations. It also involves looking at different family structures, relationships and friendships, religions and the way people express themselves through culture.
2. The world – this is about inspiring a respect and appreciation of the workings of the natural world, the environment, sciences and the impact that humans have on these places, such as through pollution or habitat destruction. It can also involve all the positive aspects that people can have too such as recycling, transport and healthcare.
3. Technology – this is an exciting area of development and covers many areas such as computing and IT, phones and communications, smart home technology, media, AI, robotics, factories and so much more. It is a fast-changing place where things evolve quickly. This area also covers technologies used in learning which can be especially important for children with SEND.

Good practice suggests that early years practitioners should re-read the EYFS to remind themselves of the goals they are trying to achieve in relation to the EYFS, whilst acknowledging that settings may have other goals too when it comes to their educational programme and curriculum).

The EYFS says:

“Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.”

 So, in addition to the three main topics to look at mentioned above, practitioners should think about how they introduce these topics, remembering that the following will be the building blocks they use to deliver the curriculum:

• Children’s personal experiences – interactions with different people, places and ideas
• Diversity – access to a wide range of cultures, books, stories, religions, science and technology
• Vocabulary – giving the children words to describe the things they experience around them

How Early Years Practitioners Can Help

Life is experiential and most people learn most effectively by experiencing things themselves – by touching and feeling the cool water running between their fingertips, listening to the hum of the bumble bee or actively trying to place the blocks to build the tallest tower. Learning to understand the world goes hand in hand with experiments and personal experiences so remember this when you are planning your curriculum for your children. This means that practitioners can show and demonstrate things, but most of the learning comes when the child gets actively and physically involved. This is where child-led play helps and practitioners can aid the learning by setting up things such as experiments, water-play, nature walks etc., and then helping by explaining things to children in appropriate language and giving the children the vocabulary they need. For example, you could organise a nature walk and suggest that the children collect small items to make a piece of natural art. When they return with assorted items, practitioners should help the children to describe them such as saying; “That’s a really smooth and spherical conker you’ve found there” or “What a great, spikey holly leaf.” They could then suggest things to help the children explore themselves, so rather than saying: “That conker would make a good head for a person in your artwork,” they could say: “I wonder how you are going to use these items in your artwork?” The first answer is directive and the second is more open, allowing the children to use their own imagination.

For children to have the most meaningful experiences, practitioners should act as a facilitator of the learning, ensuring it safe and engaging by providing useful resources, trusting relationships, and new knowledge so the children have the freedom to learn and explore.

Effective EYFS Strategies For Engaging Children With The World Around Them

Some ideas for helping children learn about the world include:

• Trips and visits to diverse cultural places
• Talks and learning about different religions such as Diwali, Ramadan, Christmas and Easter, Eid-al-Fitr, May Day, Saints’ days
• Meeting new people such as the emergency services who often have educational programmes to allow them to visit schools and nurseries
• Stories about different families, cultures and countries
• Role-plays about different people and situations
• Suitable science experiments which are age appropriate. You can find many ideas online for things such as water experiments, ‘volcano’ eruptions using common household items
• Use of technology such as IT, tablets and educational games, always ensuring safe and supervised online access
• Constructing things such as dens, obstacle courses, courses for toy cars or balls or water-courses
• Problem solving – building the tallest tower, how to get different objects to float
• Outdoor learning such as Forest School-type activities and supervised ‘risky’ play to allow children to experiment and explore the world safely
• Nature walks
• Weather watches
• Growing plants
• Looking after animals or insects
• Sensory stories and experiences such as touching different objects to feel their textures, tasting different foods (also a clever way to introduce food cultures), or listening to different sounds for example, birdsong or musical instruments

There are also a lot of specific ideas and activities for settings to try which can be found in two main documents published by the early years industry and the Government, respectively. These are:

1. Birth to 5 Matters which can be found at: https://www.birthto5matters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Birthto5Matters-download.pdf. This document is a source of lots of information, advice and ideas for early years practitioners on each of the seven areas of learning in the EYFS. It includes lots of suggestions for practical activities such as “Encourage young children to explore puddles, trees and surfaces such as grass, concrete or pebbles,” as well as ideas on how practitioners can provide enabling environments through their resources and equipment.
2. Help for early years providers at: https://help-for-early-years-providers.education.gov.uk/areas-of-learning/understanding-the-world. This is a useful resource which gives ideas and activities based around personal experiences, a diverse world and building vocabulary. Click through the topics to see what other practitioners are doing so you can pick up on and share best practice.