ICT in the Early Years

I was asked the other day about what ICT work I do with reception children and just felt that it deserved a blog post writing about it.

During the year, my aim is to get the children familiar and enthusiastic about using a range of ICT hardware and software to support their learning. Rather than just putting them on a painting program or CBeebies game every week, I do like to try and give them variety in what they do to hopefully give them the broadest possible range of experiences.

Each of my activities are about twenty minutes long and are designed for being carried out with a small group of about six children.

In my yearly overview it's worth noting that I've carefully positioned activities across that year so that certain skills are re-visited to ensure that the children gain confidence in them (e.g. controlling the Bee-Bot or operating the digital camera) and that certain activities are placed to match in with seasonal events (e.g. Bonfire Night or the arrival of Spring).

As a general rule, I tend to: focus heavily on mouse skills in the Autumn term, introduce typing of letters/words in the Spring term and then do some basic sentence typing in the Summer term - the reasons being that I need to be certain that children can accurately control the mouse as it's a fundamental skill so do this first and hold off introducing typing skills for a while until they have mastered some understanding of the alphabet/spelling strategies already in class (especially since the letters on the keyboard are formed very differently than how you average four/five-year old would expect them to be).

Hopefully by sharing my overview you can see the mixture of activities I do with EYFS children and that it has inspired you to be a bit more creative in your planning for ICT.

Finally, here are some blog posts I've written about specific EYFS ICT activities too if they're of any use:

• Learning to Control the Bee-Bot
• Using 2Simple City to Encourage Independent ICT Work in the EYFS
• Teaching Reception Children how to use a Digital Camera
• Dot-to-Dot Pictures
• Infant Encyclopedia
• Going on a Minibeast Hunt
• Teaching Reception how to Compose Music using ICT
• My Collection of Christmas Lessons 2010

Comments

[Angela Lee]

Thanks for this Simon.
I agree that the Autumn term should be fundamentally about mouse skills and giving the opportunity to level out skills of those pupil's that do not have access to PC's at home.
We are addressing this earlier this year by introducing Nursery children to regular slots in the ICT Suite.
I think it is great that you have shared the activities here to encourage a wide range of Reception activities.

[Kelly shaw]

Thanks for this Simon! I like how it all builds up on previous skills. It's certainly something that I will look at when I am planning ict opportunities for my class. I also like how it links with theme's that we cover at specific times of the year. This has therefore made me think if it is possible for me to do the usual things but using ICT so that I can assess their skills at the same time!

[Martha Gabriel]

Hello~
I'm developing a Technology in the Classroom course for kindergarten teachers who are taking their BEd at our university. I'm going to be using ICT in the Early Years by Hayes and Whitebread for an initial text for 3 sections of this course. My question is this: would you or any of your readers happen to know of appropriate resources in French that I could use for the one French section of this course?

Finding resources in French for ICT in the early years is a major challenge!
Many thanks,
Martha