Knowledge in everyday life

Introduction

The unit focuses on the knowledge, learning and thinking of children aged between 3 and 8 years old. It has been written for an audience of practitioners working in the full range of early years care and education settings: you may be a teaching assistant in an early years class, a nursery nurse, a playgroup worker or leader, or a childminder; you may work voluntarily in an early years setting. But whatever the context in which you are working, we expect you to be working there regularly, for at least five hours per week, with children in this 3–8 years age range. This is an important condition because we ask you to relate your theoretical learning to your experience of working with children. To work with children, even in a voluntary capacity, you will need to undergo certain official checks – for example, those relating to criminal records. This process will almost certainly have been carried out when you began working in your setting, but we advise you to check that it has in fact happened.

This material is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Ways of knowing: language, mathematics and science in the early years (E230) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .