“Throughout the past two years I have done various units and have enjoyed them all, but there have been some that have particularly stood out to me. For example, Unit 4 which was on the anatomy of the body. This gave me a further understanding of the human body, but also the different medical conditions that a person can develop. Doing this course has helped pave the way to my future career as a children’s nurse. In the ‘Play and Learning’ unit we explore how play supports learning development and how play changes as children grow. We use this knowledge to plan activities and experiences that suit the age and stage of the child. We apply what we have learnt on our work placement in Year 12 where we work alongside practitioners to support children in a real early years setting.

In my lesson this week, we have learned about how children develop their language skills and I am working with some of my classmates on making a game aimed at four-year-olds who can play whilst learning new words at the same time. We do lots of research on child development and work in groups on projects and present our findings in class. An important element of the course is observing children’s behaviour, and investigating the value of toys and activities used by practitioners who work with young children. From this, we produce and evaluate our own activity plans through written assessments.”