Playful activity ideas using sticks - if you only have an hour outdoors with your children, make the most of it!

Making the most of any last minute end-of-year budget underspends (ha!).

Find out how children in Berkeley get to build their own play landscapes.

Felicity and I have been updating our CPD courses - the first one to get the treatment is our brilliant (if we do say it ourselves) early years maths and numeracy action research CPD. We've updated it to include new thinking, new activity ideas and the latest ideas about the importance of physicality and movement in young children's learning. The new programme is suitable for early years practitioners wishing to take a lead on, or with responsibility for outdoor learning thr

For young children, movement and physical development is an intrinsic part of their learning experience. It is closely linked to their physical health, social and behavioural development and cognitive understanding, and nowhere is this more evident than in the outdoor environment. This self-directed and interactive CPD programme shows how important the natural world is and how it can stimulate children to investigate, interact, make connections and create new ideas. In the

Stop Press - Play Learning Life's obsession with sticks goes global (sort of): we were delighted to be asked to write about our (somewhat unhealthy) obsession with sticks, in this week’s Nursery World magazine. Our focus was on how practitioners can make the most of this free and fabulous resource to enrich the early years curriculum. We’ve touched on physical development of course (observing children becoming confident handling a stick that’s taller than they are is always