Childminding quality indicators: Play and learning
Play and learning is a 'children play and learn' quality indicator (QI).
There are illustrations of practice and challenge questions below. These can help you to assess your current practices and identify areas for growth. Illustrations of play and learning are also available for early learning and childcare and school-aged childcare.
For more information about the principles of this framework and the grading criteria, return to the framework home page.
Themes for play and learning
The themes for this QI are:
- children’s engagement
- quality of interactions
- child-centred planning
About this quality indicator
This indicator focuses on children’s right to play, demonstrating that they should have fun, experience joy and have high-quality learning experiences indoors and outdoors. It is essential that children are meaningfully and actively involved in leading their own play and learning.
There is an expectation that childminders recognise the value of play as an opportunity for developing skills for life and learning. Interactions, experiences, and spaces should successfully enrich play and learning, taking into account the needs, interests and development of each child. Children should make sustained progress in their learning through responsive planning approaches.
This QI highlights the importance of childminders using observations effectively to recognise and extend children’s knowledge, understanding, skills and achievements. These inform children’s next steps in their development, learning and wellbeing, enabling them to progress well.
The indictor highlights the importance of childminders using observations effectively to
recognise and extend children’s knowledge, understanding, skills and achievements. These should inform next steps in planning to support children's development, learning and wellbeing, enabling them to progress well. Childminders skilfully use interactions to enhance and extend children’s thinking. Children are supported to recognise, enjoy and celebrate their successes.
'Very good' children’s engagement
Children are successful, responsible and confident in their play as a result of high-quality experiences. Children are highly motivated and fully engaged by the range of rich, challenging, planned and spontaneous experiences both indoors and outdoors. Well considered innovations and creative approaches successfully engage children’s imagination and enrich their play and learning. Children’s skills in language, literacy and numeracy are enhanced through play and learning experiences.
Childminders work effectively with families to support their understanding of the benefits to children of play and learning experiences which challenge and delight them. This partnership approach fosters the development of trust and cooperation which supports children’s wellbeing and development and gives them opportunities to flourish.
Children make informed choices about leading their play and learning within an enabling, challenging and creative environment. Their interests are extended and sustained through the use of high-quality interactions, experiences and spaces. This includes developing strong connections to their own and wider communities. Children have time, space and support to make decisions and develop their learning, creativity, resilience and independence.
'Weak' children’s engagement
Children have limited opportunities to lead their play and learning or to influence the range of spaces and experiences available to them. The play and learning environment overall lacks inspiration. There is little to challenge or ignite children’s imagination and curiosity, or to encourage them to explore their ideas.
Children’s individual development needs and their interests are not reflected within the interactions, experiences and spaces. As a result, children are not engaged. They miss opportunities to learn, build confidence and make choices. Children therefore lack interest and motivation and may experience boredom, distress or frustration.
Children have few opportunities to access their own or wider communities. This limits access to a wide range of resources and experiences to enhance their play and development opportunities.
'Very good' quality of interactions
Childminders have a very good understanding of how children learn and progress. They make use of relevant theory and practice, and skilfully use this to support high quality play and learning experiences. Childminders support the emotional resilience of children through holistic and nurturing approaches to secure children’s wellbeing, including the right to play.
Careful observations are used to interpret children’s interests and provide opportunities to extend their thinking without directing their play. Childminders use a variety of approaches to respond to children’s cues to support development of self-regulation, empathy, confidence, creativity and curiosity.
Responsive and caring interactions support the development of communication, language, movement and social development through effective modelling of these skills. Childminders support children using concepts such as sustained shared thinking, wondering aloud and by engaging in meaningful conversations. They understand that interacting and exploring with children is a valuable way to build vocabulary and foster understanding, and a sense of wonder and excitement about the world. They enable next steps and give praise for trying things out.
Children have frequent, appropriate opportunities to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills through imaginative play and storytelling. This helps children to extend their own thinking, practice new skills and consolidate their learning in ways which are meaningful to them.
Childminders enable children to play and learn at their own pace, having fun as they explore the world around them. They understand when to engage and when to stand back and observe. Childminders encourage children’s interactions with each other and take account of interactions that take place through actions, including verbal and non-verbal communications. This enables children to make the most of interactions, experiences and the physical environment for their learning and development.
'Weak' quality of interactions
Conversations and interactions with children lack structure and challenge and miss opportunities to build on their interests. Childminders lack understanding around children’s emergent communication and language needs or their preferred ways of communicating. This results in missed opportunities for children to make progress and can mean children become passive, distressed, or frustrated in their learning.
Childminders are not child-focused in their interactions and fail to recognise and value children’s thoughts, interests and processes during play. Children’s play is often interrupted by adult led routines and interactions that are task oriented. As a result, children lack opportunities to become absorbed in their play, solve problems and follow their own interests.
'Very good' child-centred planning and assessment
Children are at the centre of all planning for play and learning. Childminders are skilled in recognising the different stages in children’s play and learning. They use observations of individual children’s patterns of play to plan, support, challenge and extend their learning. This enables children to make progress at their own pace.
Children are highly motivated and fully engaged by the range of rich, challenging play and learning opportunities, offered through a balance of intentional and spontaneous planning. Experiences reflect children’s ideas, aspirations, curiosities and meaningful next steps in their learning.
Careful observations and effective assessments recognise and promote children’s progress and achievements. Any additional supports are identified, planned for and implemented. This highly responsive approach ensures children are developing a broad range of knowledge, understanding and skills for life and learning.
Childminders work together with children, families and partners to support children to enjoy their successes and share their achievements in play and learning.
'Weak' child-centred planning and assessment
Opportunities to observe and assess children in their everyday play are missed, leading to gaps in understanding around their interests and overall development.
Childminders either do not have, or do not use, information needed to effectively respond and plan to meet children’s individual needs and interests, including additional supports where required. As a result, some children are not experiencing appropriate opportunities to support and consolidate their own learning through play and are not sufficiently challenged at an appropriate level.
There are limited or inconsistent approaches in place to evaluate children’s progress and achievements, or to use this information to plan for next steps in learning.
Information gathered is not individualised or used effectively to plan the spaces, experiences and interactions each child needs to thrive. Observations are irregular, and do not link to individual children’s interests or their stages of play and learning. This results in a lack of understanding of progress over time.
Families are not involved or given high quality information on their children’s learning, which results in a lack of consistency and continuity.
The following challenge questions can support your self-evaluation:
- How well is children’s natural curiosity, creativity and problem solving encouraged and supported in the service?
- What approaches are used to promote children’s developing skills over a broad range of areas such as emotional and social development, emergent language skills, literacy and numeracy?
- How can children be supported to have confidence in leading their own learning?
- How do I ensure I keep up to date with relevant theory and demonstrate how my understanding of child development supports high-quality play and learning experiences?
- How do I ensure my approach to children’s needs recognises the independent thoughts and feelings of children as individuals?
- How does my service approach support for children to develop their thinking and problem-solving skills?
- How do I ensure planning delivers experiences that are developmentally appropriate for all children in the service?
- How effective are processes to monitor children’s development, progress and achievements?
- How well does the information gathered about children’s progress inform planning in the service?
- How do I maximise opportunities for children to be challenged, creative and engaged in their play and learning?
