EYFS: A Unique Child - Health and Wellbeing

[Ruthierhyme]

This page of the DCSF's website gives some examples of planning acivities that promote health & wellbeing - A Unique Child Health & Wellbeing

What sort of things do you do as a group and would you do them again ?

The EYFS is based on a set of principles, each one directly related to the four themes

Unique child
Positive relationships
Enabling environments
Learning and development

Each of the themes is supported by four commitments (16 in total) again each of the commintments has a statement

The cards that correspond to the themes are packed with statements and questions to support reflective thinking.
The cards are to support the practitioners learning and thinking.

Staff must read and take in the Themes,principles and commitments before they open the Practice Guidance document

Principles into practice cards - OUR LEARNING
Practice Guidance - THE CHILDRENS LEARNING

Health and well being is a commitment of the unique child
This is the commitment we make to their learning and development

Front of the card shows three areas we need to consider that make up health and well being, basically its trying to get us to think about wider issues than health. Its steering us towards the fact that emtional well being is just as important.

Growing and developing
Physical well being
Emotional well being

Here we find statements to enable us to extend our knowledge and thinking

ie emotional well being - last bullet point
Children feel a sense of belonging in their setting when their parents are involved in it.

So the actitivy here would be to ensure parents are welcomed and valued, their points about the childs care are taken on board, their needs, likes, dislikes etc - it doesnt necessarily have to be and activity like physical play.

on the back of the card

effective practice
tells us what we might do in terms of best practice so the second bullet point supports the ppoint mentioned earlier

Reflecting on practice
asks - do we encourage children to know about and choose healthy snacks?
This could be documented under being healthy and linked to this
The reflection section is designed to pose questions to us - ask these at staff meetings, use the cards as discussion points when holding info sharing meetings linked to the implementation of the EYFS

Challenges and dilemmas
are the barriers to meeting the thinking of the EYFS
a challenge we face may be about helping children to understand why some choices are healthier than others (last bullet point). The dilemma may be that the child does not eat healthy at home - so how will you address this???

Hope this helps you to understand the use of the cards and the themes of the EYFS