Shaping Us Campaign: Enhancing EYFS Social and Emotional Skills

Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales has recently launched a major new campaign to raise awareness and increase public understanding of the crucial importance of child development during the first five years of a child’s life.

The ‘Shaping Us’ campaign, devised by The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, explores how our early experiences and environment play a significant role in helping to shape the adults we become. The campaign emphasizes the critical importance of the earliest years in shaping a child's future abilities, relationships, and overall well-being.

We were particularly interested in the new framework here at Pentagon Play as we too strive to ‘improve children’s lives today, to shape happier and healthier grown-ups tomorrow.’

Purpose and Structure of the Child Development Framework

Early childhood educators may use the framework to review their activities and understand where there are opportunities to do more to strengthen different areas of children’s development.

The framework comprises of thirty social and emotional skills grouped into six clusters. Understanding the unique importance of these early years is vital for shaping future generations. In this blog we will explore each of the six clusters in turn in order to gain an understanding of how to best support social and emotional skills in early childhood.

1. Know Ourselves

By the age of five, most children will begin to develop a sense of self by exploring their bodies and the objects around them, highlighting the critical significance of the first five years of a child's life.

Infants actually begin to make sense of their bodies very early. Babies will squirm and wave and as soon as they can get up on their hands and knees will learn to rock and then to crawl.

Babies put things in their mouths and enjoy rolling food around with their tongues. These behaviours promote exploration and learning. As babies learn about self-movement they will gain knowledge of the world, space, time and their relationship with others.

Early on, infants will begin to show interest in objects: spoons, teething rings or food soon become objects of play. As children progress, they begin to develop preferences for particular toys and will begin to manipulate objects whether building a tower of blocks, making marks or kicking a ball into a goal.

Early years educators play an important role in helping children to build a clear picture of who they are, what they want to do and how they will achieve their goals.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• Practitioners can offer a wide selection of activities based around children’s individual interests which help them to achieve their goals.
• In order for educators to have an insight into children’s lives, pupils could make and share their own ‘Treasure Boxes’ containing special items which focus on important memories and dreams for the future. Schools and nurseries may have a central notice board where staff/parents and children can share news and achievements.
• Support children to feel confident when making choices and help them to take responsibility for their actions.
• Consider classroom layout and use of storage. Do children know how to self-access resources? Pentagon Play offer a wide range of versatile classroom storage units to create an inviting learning environment.
• Develop continuity and consistency in order to help children to explore their environment independently.
• Establish a set routine and make children aware of any changes.
• Emphasize the need to support parents and caregivers in providing stable, loving environments for children.

2. Manage Our Emotions and Mental Health

By age 5 most children are beginning to understand and express their emotions more clearly. Children will be able to recognise different emotions in themselves and others such as happiness, sadness, anger or excitement.

Early years learners may be able to think about what caused their emotional response and to act appropriately. For example, a child may notice that their friend appears sad or lonely and will ask to play with them.

Young children especially will require help to process and regulate their emotions. By age 5 children may look to adults to comfort them and help them to manage strong feelings. This shift in understanding and managing emotions highlights the scientific interest in early childhood development and its broader societal importance.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• When reading stories, practitioners can describe character’s feelings using a wide range of words and help to explain meaning. For example: He feels proud because he didn’t give up on his wonderful drawing.
• Make use of a selection of pictures and mirrors so that children can practise and describe how someone is feeling from their facial expressions.
• Consider creating cosy and homely areas such as a Millhouse Curious and Cosy Zone in your setting which will encourage lots of opportunities for conversation and adult-guided play.
• Allow plenty of time for outdoor play in order to support children's mental health and physical well being. Play is a natural way for children to feel big emotions, express them and process them. Children can often be at their most relaxed and calm playing outdoors. When children are playing outdoors whether running, shouting, jumping or laughing they often cannot help but show you what is going on in their minds.

3. Focus our Thoughts

By 5 years old most children can focus their attention on a task whether listening to a story or building a sandcastle. It can be difficult for children to sustain focus especially when tasks are challenging or do not go as expected.

Throughout early childhood, learners need to practise problem solving in their everyday lives and often need to repeat actions over and over again to gain mastery of them.

Use of the outdoor environment can be particularly effective as children need to adapt to ever changing conditions. Children may need to make some decisions as to what they need to wear or where they will play.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• Offer resources that meet children’s developmental needs and interests. Whether it’s water play, climbing, mark making or den building children need plenty of opportunities to independently develop their ability to focus.
• Find the right balance when providing adult support. Resist the urge to take over if children are struggling with something but perhaps question or offer a suggestion if pupils seem lost.
• Model responding positively when things go wrong and talk about learning from failure.
• Always respect children’s efforts and ideas so that they feel safe to take a risk with a new idea and feel comfortable with mistakes.
• Consider classroom layout and storage solutions. A busy environment with too much choice may be distracting and limit children’s ability to focus.
• Does the setting support children’s investigations by allowing them to move resources between areas of provision? For example, could children move a Get Set, Go Block over to the stage area to support their play? In order to problem solve well classes need to have some choice and opportunities to make decisions.

4. Communicate with Others

Babies are born with an innate desire to connect and communicate even though they cannot talk yet! Playing peekaboo, smiling and kicking legs in the air are important social interactions. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development.

By the age of 5 most children develop a basic ability to express their feelings and needs through words and actions. Children need time in order to process what has been said to them and will need conversation gaps in order to formulate their responses.

Young children will also have started to recognise and respond to non-verbal cues about how others are feeling.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• Provide plenty of hands-on opportunities which encourage learning and provide a context for new words to be explored. Experiences may include painting, creating music, playing with small world resources or exploring nature.
• When joining in with children’s play add comments, repeat back, wonder aloud and add new words which will extend a child’s vocabulary.
• Sing songs and chant fun rhymes to explore the sounds and patterns of words.
• Read high-quality stories and share books to strengthen language skills and to widen children’s vocabulary.
• Create role play areas such as a post office, hospital or shop where children can extend their language through pretend play. A Pentagon Playhouse creates an ideal, open-ended EYFS role play base.

5. Nurture our Relationships

Early years learners are continually developing skills to help them to get along well with others. This begins with caregivers and trusted adults, progressing to friends as children grow. By age 5 children can recognise and demonstrate a range of emotions such as helping a friend when they are in need.

Young children learn to form relationships, to cooperate, share and take turns. Conflict resolution skills will need to be supported and practised as children learn the importance of kindness and how to build social connections. Developing positive relationships with others helps children to discover who they are and to enjoy new experiences helping to create a more compassionate world.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• Greet children by name as they enter the setting each day.
• When sharing stories together ask children: Which characters are friends? How can we tell? How can you be a good friend?
• Encourage children to praise one another and give compliments if they spot that somebody has been kind or has achieved a goal. Ask: What makes you feel happy? What can you do to make somebody happy today?
• Provide ample opportunities for children to engage in free play with others in order to learn and develop essential social skills.
• Provide children with a selection of art materials and ask them to create something. Explain to children that like the artwork they have created we are all unique and special.
• Use of an ‘emotions’ display board can allow practitioners to ‘check-in’ with different children over the course of a day to establish why a child may be struggling.
• Practitioners can promote simple, outdoor small group games such as tag or hide-and-seek to encourage children to interact, learn how to cooperate and take risks without the fear of failure.

6. Explore the Nurturing World

Young children are naturally curious and eager to explore the world around them. By age 5 most children will want to explore and play creatively whether building structures, putting on plays or inventing games.

Children at this age often find joy in venturing outside and admiring nature. Learners may wonder and ask questions as they discover new things and begin to understand complex concepts in the world around them.

Suggested Ideas and Best Practice

• Increase children's personal experiences and knowledge through nature walks in the school grounds or local area. Visit local parks, libraries and museums.
• Go on a nature walk during each season, collect natural items to discuss in the setting and notice environmental changes.
• Plant seeds and explore plant life cycles.
• Invite parents and important members of society - police officers, firefighters, nurses to explain their roles to learners.
• Share a broad selection of stories both fiction and non-fiction which showcase our diverse world.
• Use a diverse range of dolls and puppets.
• Celebrate cultural, religious and community events and experiences.

Let's Start Shaping the Next Generation Today

As The Princess of Wales states in the 'Shaping Us' campaign: 'the way we develop through our experiences, relationships and surroundings during our early childhood fundamentally shapes our whole lives.

Early childhood experiences can effect many aspects from our relationships to our mental and physical well being as adults and also impacts the way in which we parent our own children.'

Pentagon Play echo the important messages stated in the campaign and also believe that time, energy and resources should support our youngest members of society. If we act now we can make a huge difference to the health and happiness of generations to come. Therefore creating a happier, healthier, more nurturing world for us all to live in.