early years themes

[steph29]

just had a letter from pre-school saying they are no longer having themes but planning according to childrens individual interests, how does this work? surely at this age kids are still learning about the world around them and need to be introduced to new things before they can decide on specific interests other than favourite toys and tv programmes?!
Also a friend who stayed to help out last week said the keyworkers just sat and watched them play and didn't encourage them to get involved in anything unless they asked to do something specific. Her little boy spent 2 hours walking around with the same toy in his hand, but had they offered himsomething to do he probably would have joined in.
Is this true for most playgroups now?

[PuzzleRocks]

Bumping for you.

[purepurple]

we don't have themes. we work with the children's interests. For example, one child loves the water tray so we think of different things to do with the water, bubbles, pirate ships, pouring and measuring, foam numbers, etc etc.
We have continuous provision so all areas are available all day, and the children can choose what they want to play with. I find it works perfectly well. the children are all learning, and I can record this by playing with them and observing them at play.

[PandaG]

we don't have longer term pre-planned themes either any more - is part of the EYFS that we have to provide for the children's needs and interests. so this week we are doing robots and rockets as a couple of specific children are interested in them - and lots of other children have an interest too. We will be doing bear hunt stuff in a couple of weeks as several children have a real love of this book.

I agree that we should be helping children to make choices, and encouraging them to participate, and by havibg the continuous provision children should be able tpo access what they want, but may need help initially getting used to choosing.

sometimes at work several staff may all be doing an observation at the same time, but that is because each of us has noticed something interesting a key child is doing and is writing it down. We try not to do long observations at the same time as eacxh other.