All Modules B6-Development Matters in the early years | Page 48

Playing and Exploring, Active Learning, and Creating and Thinking Critically support children’s learning across all areas

8 Expressive arts – Science and design: Exploring and using media and materials
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19.
30-50 months 20.
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25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
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31.
32.
40-60+
months

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38.

Positive Relationships:
what adults could do

Enabling Environments:
what adults could provide

Enjoys joining in with dancing and ring games.
Sings a few familiar songs.
Beginning to move rhythmically.
Imitates movement in response to music.
Taps out simple repeated rhythms.
Explores and learns how sounds can be changed.
Explores colour and how colours can be changed.
Understands that they can use lines to enclose a space,
and then begin to use these shapes to represent objects.
Beginning to be interested in and describe the texture
of things.
Uses various construction materials.
Beginning to construct, stacking blocks vertically
and horizontally, making enclosures and creating
spaces.
Joins construction pieces together to build and balance.
Realizes tools can be used for a purpose
Cuts, pastes, rips, colors, paints with multiple materials
Enjoys clay, plasticine and mording materials

• Support children’s responses to different textures, e.g.
touching sections of a texture display with their fingers,
or feeling it with their cheeks to get a sense of different
properties.
• Introduce vocabulary to enable children to talk about
their observations and experiences, e.g. ’smooth’ ‘shiny’
‘rough’ ‘prickly’ ‘flat’ ‘patterned’ ‘jagged’, ‘bumpy’ ‘soft’
and ‘hard’.
• Talk about children’s growing interest in and use of colour
as they begin to find differences between colours.
• Make suggestions and ask questions to extend children’s
ideas of what is possible, for example, “I wonder what
would happen if…”.
• Support children in thinking about what they want to make,
the processes that may be involved and the materials
and resources they might need, such as a photograph to
remind them what the climbing frame is like.

• Lead imaginative movement sessions based on
children’s current interests such as space travel, zoo
animals or shadows.
• Provide a place where work in progress can be kept
safely.
• Talk with children about where they can see models
and plans in the environment, such as at the local
planning office, in the town square, or at the new
apartments down the road.
• Demonstrate and teach skills and techniques associated
with the things children are doing, for example, show
them how to stop the paint from dripping or how to
balance bricks so that they will not fall down.
• Introduce children to a wide range of music, painting
and sculpture.
• Encourage children to take time to think about painting
or sculpture that is unfamiliar to them before they talk
about it or express an opinion.

Begins to build a repertoire of songs and dances.
Explores the different sounds of instruments.
Explores what happens when they mix colors.
Experiments to create different textures.
Understands that different media can be combined to
create new effects.
Manipulates materials to achieve a planned effect.
Constructs with a purpose in mind, using a variety
of resources.
Uses simple tools and techniques competently
and appropriately.
Selects appropriate resources and adapts work
where necessary.
Selects tools and techniques needed to shape, assemble
and join materials they are using.
Understand space relations and construct with shapes in
two and thee dimensions

• Talk to children about ways of finding out what they can do • Provide resources for mixing colours, joining things
with different media and what happens when they put
together and combining materials, demonstrating
different things together such as sand, paint and sawdust.
where appropriate.
• Provide children with opportunities to use their
• Encourage children to notice changes in properties of
media as they are transformed through becoming wet,
skills and explore concepts and ideas through their
representations.
dry, flaky or fixed. Talk about what is happening, helping
them to think about cause and effect.
• Have a ‘holding bay’ where models and works can be
retained for a period for children to enjoy, develop, or
refer to.
• Plan imaginative, active experiences, such as ‘Going on
a bear hunt’. Help them remember the actions of the
story (We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
and Helen Oxenbury) and think about the different ways
of moving.

39. Early Learning Goal
40. Children sing songs, make music and dance, and
experiment with ways of changing them. They safely
use and explore a variety of materials, tools and
techniques, experimenting with colour, design,
texture, form and function.

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Expressive arts and design: media and materials

A Unique Child:
observing what a child is learning