Local 4 Global

Play and the global dimension in Early Years settings

Aims of the project were:
• To promote the value of play in the pre-school and early years to parents and families in Hackney Haringey, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets

• To encourage parents and children to make their own toys and play together

• To promote the connection between play and development in the Early Years

The project was developed in consultation with:
Tower Hamlets Early Years Team, parents sessions at IDEAS Stores and at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, and Sure Start, Tower Hamlets

With contributions from:
Parents and children in the Gambia, Palestine and Lebanon

The activities and resources developed through the consultation were trialled in Early Years settings

In Hackney at Princess May Primary School

In Haringey at Crowland Primary School

In Waltham Forest at Edinburgh Primary School

What we did:

Stage 1: Workshops and consultation with parents:

Toymaker Renzo Laporta ran workshops on making toys from re-using everyday items what would normally be thrown away for parents and children in four different Ideas Stores in Tower Hamlets during August 2007.
Questionnaires were carried out with parents the workshops about their memories of toys that they made and played with as children. The purpose of this is to create a resource of games from around the world which will be part of the toys box that schools can borrow from the Tower Hamlets School Library Services. The workshops at the Ideas Stores were a Sure Start initiative. Sure Start were keen engage with this project because it promoted parental involvement.

We also ran a consultation afternoon with parents who had previously attended Renzo's workshops at the Museum of Childhood to ask them about the kind of provision they felt they needed to encourage them to engage with play activities with their children. The feedback was that parents found workshops like Renzo's very useful and children enjoyed playing with the home made toys at home after the workshop.

Stage 2: Consultation with Southern Partners
We set up email communication with partners in the Gambia, Lebanon and Palestine to send and receive response to questionnaires about toys and games used in these countries. (These were the same questionnaire that were used with parents in Tower Hamlets described above).

Stage 3: Training and consultation days in with teachers
Two consultation days with EY teachers from Hackney, Haringey and Waltham Forest were held at HEC. Day one involved in put from Renzo on how to make toys out of recycled materials. This was followed by teachers matching the skills and learning involved children making these toys with particular developmental and language attainment stages in EY and KS1.
The teachers were asked to trail the toy making process in school and feedback for session two. At the second session teacher reported on how toy making activities needed to be adapted for EY settings and reception classes. They shared the modification to the toys they had made. Together we drafted guidelines which could be given to parents to encourage them to make toys with their children at home. In Sept 07 these teachers will aim to encourage parents to get involved with the toy making activities they run in school.

Stage 4: Trialling the activities in schools
In September, November and December 2007 teachers from the schools in Hackney, Haringey and Waltham Forest trialled the Global Toys box in their schools. The box contains: Examples of shop brought and recycled toys, a selection of books about making toys from around the world, teachers pack with information about the toys in the box and instructions for how to make them, information about play and the global dimension; Renzo's toy making booklet. Feedback from the trial will feed into alterations/additional made to the box before it is made available to loan to other schools.

Sophie Mackay, HEC, September 2007

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