Planning Next Steps following children’s interests

To follow children’s interests in your planning, you first need to consider what you have observed. Think about what you have seen, heard and made notes about – what did the children like to do?

Once you have a few ideas, you need to consider how you are going to help them progress in all areas of learning and development.

For example, planning for a child under the age of 3 who likes their pet cat the next steps to follow their interest of cats could be:

Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Personal, Social and Emotional Development Talk to child about why they like cats. Do they have a pet cat? How does it feel to stroke a cat? Give them access to different materials which feels most like a cat’s fur? Which material feels nice to stroke? Discuss feelings and their likes
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Physical Development Act like a cat – who does a cat walk? Wash its face? Drink milk? Develop gross motor skills and co-ordination
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Communication and language Talk about cats and what they do, what do they like to eat? Develop vocabulary
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Literacy Read a cat story like ‘Puss in boots’. Talk about cats wearing boots. Look up cats on the internet – discuss the different colours Read books, Use IT resources
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Numeracy Count how many legs a cat has, how many legs does the child have? Count to 4
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Understanding the World Talk about big cats like tigers, lions, jaguars etc. wild cats and pet cats, discuss what makes them similar (maths) Find out about big zoo animals, small domestic animals (maths)
Development Area: Planned Activity: Learning Objective:	Art and Design Make a tiger pattern using orange, black and white strips of card, turn it into a tiger picture frame for child to put their cat’s picture in. (PSED) Pretend to be a lion roaring and a cat meowing Sing songs like: Pussy cat pussy cat where have you been, add actions to songs – use utube videos for ideas. Sing and dance Role Play different cats Use IT (UW) Produce a useful product

Enhance the environment – use small world resources to create a zoo etc, for children to play with.

Support other children’s interests – by encouraging them to join in conversations and talk about if they have a cat, visited a zoo and so on. Also encourage them to create frames too.

Further Observations /Parents comments

Notice child is interested in big cats more, like tigers and has identified Tigger in Winnie the Pooh as a tiger.

As can be seen, with a little imagination and practice, the interests of a child can be expanded relatively easily and the next steps chosen and fulfilled.

This pattern of choosing an observation and linking appropriate activities to each development, then carrying out more observations leading to more learning opportunities supports planning and a child’s learning.

Early Tracker can support this and save you time through the next steps section of the Assessments

Once you are aware of the child’s interests you can look the their develops in turn and add a custom next step to reflect their interest as shown above – this can also be added to the timetable of planned activities.

Note that the re-loaded next steps only refer to the EYFS developments and not the unique interests each of your child may have, so the custom next step allows for greater individual planning.