Early years colourful learning goals

As part of the early years curriculum the children meet their Early Learning Goals at the end of Reception.  In Early years at Monkton, learning takes place through child-led play, to foster deeper learning and understanding. In Reception, the children are set a series of challenges each week which cover all the seven areas of learning in Early years.   The learning is intrinsic, and the children are encouraged to challenge themselves and reflect on what they have learned.  One of the Early Learning Goals is Expressive arts and design where the children have to demonstrate that they are confident in colour mixing - ie they are aware of what happens when they mix different primary colours together.  The children were given the three primary colours and given the task of creating new colour.  It was done on a big board called a tuff spot, and they first had the chance to mix with different tools, with their hands adding shaving foam, and finally with small brushes.  As they were creating the new colours, some of them began to give their colours some wonderfully descriptive names.   As part of The Communication and language Early Learning Goals, the children should extend their language by grouping and naming clarify their thinking, so this fell perfectly into that category.  Friday mornings are our time to reflect back on their learning with the children, a technique suggested by Dylan William who led our Inset day in Formative assessment, and as part of that process, many of the children have said that they would really like to learn more about colour mixing.  So, they created swatches of the colours they produced.