This book builds upon Alistair Bryce-Clegg’s previous title Continuous Provision in the Early Years.

Continuous Provision: The Skills is designed to show practitioners what effective continuous provision should look like and how practitioners can link their provision directly to assessment. It has an emphasis on skill-based learning. Alistair Bryce-Clegg shows the difference between ‘pure skills’, skills related to specific areas of continuous provision like sand, water and role play, and ‘facilitative skills’ that children can experience throughout a setting, in many different areas and activities. This book looks at all areas of continuous provision with a view to helping practitioners to identify, assess and teach different ‘pure’ and ‘facilitative’ skills.

The other essential element for really good continuous provision is a measure of open-ended experience, to allow children to use their own creativity and curiosity to interpret and use what they see around them. This book provides plenty of suggestions to make activities interesting and engaging for children, to encourage them to challenge themselves and learn new skills.