Why Great Early Years Practice Starts With Knowing the Child

Sarah Putland

3 days ago

6 min read

Walk into almost any early years setting and you will see resources, activities, planning, observations and carefully considered environments.

But great early years practice doesn't begin with any of these things.

It begins with knowing the child.

Before we decide what a child needs to learn next, what resources to provide or how an environment should be arranged, we need to understand the person standing in front of us.

What fascinates them? What makes them laugh? What makes them cautious? Where do they feel most confident? What do they return to again and again? How do they communicate? Who do they seek out when they need reassurance? What experiences have they had outside the setting? What are they trying to understand about the world?

When we really know a child, our practice changes.

Children are not a list of milestones

Child development knowledge is incredibly important. As early years educators, we need to understand typical patterns of development and recognise when a child may need additional support. But there is a danger when developmental guidance becomes the starting point rather than the child.

We can begin looking for what a child should be doing rather than noticing what they are doing.

A two-year-old isn't simply a two-year-old.

One may spend hours transporting objects from one place to another.

Another might be fascinated by insects.

One may communicate confidently through spoken language

while another communicates through movement, gesture, expression and sound.

They may be similar ages, but their experiences of the world are completely different.

Our job isn't to make all three children do the same activity because they happen to appear on the same planning sheet. Our job is to understand each child's thinking and decide how we can help them take it further.

Observation should be about curiosity

Sometimes observation in early years can become something we do because we need evidence. We observe a child, write down what happened, link it to an area of learning and identify a next step. But observation can be much more powerful than that.

At Saffrons, we want our educators to become curious about children.

Instead of immediately asking:

"What learning can I tick off from this?"

we can ask:

"What is this child trying to understand?"

A child repeatedly dropping stones into a tube might be investigating sound, trajectory, disappearance, cause and effect or simply the fascinating question:

"What happens if I do this again?"

We don't necessarily know.

And that is the point.

Observation shouldn't always be about finding an answer. Sometimes it should make the educator ask a better question.

Interests are more than favourite things

Knowing a child doesn't simply mean knowing that they like dinosaurs. There is a difference between knowing what a child likes and understanding how they think.

If a child is fascinated by dinosaurs, buying more dinosaurs isn't necessarily extending their learning.

Instead, we might notice that they are interested in sorting them by size.

Perhaps they repeatedly create enclosures for them.

Maybe their play is dominated by storytelling, movement or ideas about danger and rescue.

The dinosaur is the subject.

The thinking underneath it is what interests us.

When we begin to notice these patterns, we can provide experiences that connect with the child's thinking rather than simply adding more resources connected to a theme.

Relationships come before teaching

Children learn best when they feel safe, secure and understood. This is why the relationship between an Educator and a child is so important.

Knowing a child means recognising the tiny signals that another adult might miss.

- It is knowing that a particular expression means, "I'm not sure about this."

- It is knowing when to offer a hand and when to wait.

- It is knowing that a child who is watching from the edge isn't necessarily disengaged.

- It is understanding when a child needs closeness and when they are telling us, "I can do this myself."

This is particularly important with babies and young children who may not yet be able to tell us what they need through spoken language.

When educators slow down enough to notice these signals, care becomes respectful and teaching becomes responsive.

Knowing the child changes the environment

Our environments shouldn't remain static simply because adults have decided where everything belongs.

Children tell us what an environment needs.

We just have to watch.

If children constantly move furniture, perhaps they need spaces they can construct themselves.

If they repeatedly seek enclosed spaces, perhaps they are telling us they need somewhere smaller and more intimate.

If they transport resources across the room, rather than repeatedly asking them to put things back, we might ask what is driving that behaviour.

If an area is rarely used, the question shouldn't automatically be:

"How can we encourage children to play here?"

It might be:

"Why doesn't this space currently meet their needs?"

The environment should evolve in response to the children inhabiting it.

That is very different from creating a beautiful room and expecting children to fit into it.

Knowing when not to intervene

Perhaps one of the hardest skills for an Early Years Educator is knowing when to do nothing.

Adults naturally want to help. We want to demonstrate, explain, fix and solve.

But when we know a child well, we become better at recognising when they don't need us.

- A child struggling to balance two blocks may not need an adult to show them how.

- A child trying repeatedly to climb onto a platform may not need lifting up.

- Two children negotiating over a resource may not immediately need an adult to resolve the situation.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is wait.

Because in that struggle might be problem solving, resilience, communication, confidence and independence. If we intervene too quickly, we can accidentally take the learning away.

The key person should be an expert on their children

The key person role is much more than being responsible for observations or being the main point of contact for a family.

A great key person becomes an expert on their children.

They understand their development, but they also understand their personality, family, communication, interests, dispositions and ways of learning.

And that knowledge should influence practice.

- It should influence the conversations we have with families.

- It should influence the resources we introduce.

- It should influence the environment.

- It should influence when we intervene and when we step back.

- And it should influence what we offer next.

Start with the child, not the activity

One of the simplest questions we can ask ourselves when planning is:

"Why are we doing this?"

If the answer is, "because we always do this at this time of year," it may be worth reconsidering.

Instead of starting with activities, themes or Pinterest ideas, start with the children.

What are they currently talking about?

What questions seem to be emerging?

What are they repeatedly experimenting with?

Where are they experiencing difficulty?

What new possibilities could we introduce?

What have families told us?

What have we noticed that we don't yet understand?

This changes planning from deciding what children will do to thinking deeply about what children might need from us.

Creating Tomorrow's Thinkers

At Saffrons Park Nursery, our philosophy is centred around ‘Creating Tomorrow's Thinkers.’

We want children to develop curiosity, confidence, communication, creativity, collaboration, problem solving, resilience and independence.

These aren't skills that can simply be delivered through an adult-planned activity.

They develop when educators know children well enough to provide the right balance of security and challenge.

Sometimes a child needs encouragement.

Sometimes they need a new material.

Sometimes they need a question.

Sometimes they need an environment to change.

And sometimes they simply need us to stand back and give them time.

There isn't one formula because there isn't one child.

The most important resource in the room

We can invest in beautiful resources.

We can redesign our environments.

We can write ambitious curriculums and detailed improvement plans.

We can attend training and introduce new approaches.

All of these things can contribute to excellent Early Years provision.

But none of them replaces an educator who genuinely knows the child.

An educator who watches.

Who listens.

Who wonders.

Who notices the small things.

Who builds relationships with families.

Who questions their own assumptions.

And who is prepared to change the environment, the plan or even their own behaviour because of what a child has shown them.

Because great early years practice isn't about getting children to fit our provision.

It is about knowing children well enough to make our provision fit them.