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Barrier games
Barrier games build on children's natural desire to combine block play with small world items.
Early years position
eyfs_activity
Obstacle course
As children move around an obstacle course, adults can model positional language, encourage children to describe their movement themselves and create their own course.
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Mapping
In this activity, children are encouraged to follow familiar and new routes, and to create their own maps.
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Eyfs thinking about: paths and maps
Here are some examples of children's thinking following on from their exploration of the NRICH Paths activity.
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Can you build this?
Children explore characteristics of shapes and use both everyday and mathematical language to describe them, talk about positions and solve problems
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The importance of shape and space in the early years
In this article for EY practitioners, Dr Sue Gifford discusses children's early spatial thinking and how this predicts their mathematical understanding and achievement.
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Using books: the doorbell rang
In this activity, the book 'The Doorbell Rang' by Pat Hutchins provides an engaging context in which children can explore sharing.
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Tubes and tunnels
When investigating these tubes, children will have the opportunity to practise using everyday language to talk about length, size and position.
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Small world play
This activity provides an engaging context for children to consider the space they will allocate for some 'small world' toys, and how many toys they will be able to fit into the space.
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Position with wellies
This task uses the familiar situation of a shelf of objects to encourage children to use positional language and follow directions to find their wellies.