A summary of Foundation Stage history, explaining how the national curriculum is brought to life by learning through experience, with helpful guides on lesson plans and top tips on simple homework that will help your child get ahead of the game.
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Foundation Stage history is part of the national curriculum’s learning objectives for developing children's understanding of the world, so they will learn through experiences that introduce the concept of time and change. The practitioner may ask ‘What happened next?' after reading a story or looking at other sequences of events, like getting dressed, planting a seed or making a sandwich. A popular focus is to get the children to bring in photographs of themselves as babies and to explore how they have changed over time.
Your child will explore patterns and routines and may be given opportunities to take part in events to celebrate time, like planting an anniversary tree. It is also common for children to be encouraged to record their findings by drawing or writing.
Lessons in Foundation Stage History
A group of children look at photographs of themselves and each other as babies and compare what they can do now with what they could do then.
During the spring and summer, children observe the life cycle of frogs, butterflies and annual plants in the garden and pond and describe and draw the changes over time.
After a visit by her grandmother, Grace talks to a group about the old toys she has brought for display and explains how they were used by her grandmother when she was a girl.
Help your child at home
- Encourage your child's awareness of features in the area you live. Point out how some buildings look older than others
- Take your child to museums, galleries and history-themed events
- Discuss events that occur regularly within your child's experience, for example seasonal patterns, daily routines and celebrations
- Help your child to develop a sense of change over time and to differentiate between past and present, for example by growing plants or looking at photographs of your child since birth. Talk about past and present events in their own lives, and in those of other members of the family or friends
- Model investigative behaviour and raise questions such as, ‘What do you think?', Tell me more about?', 'What will happen if?', ‘What else could we try?', ‘What could it be used for?' and ‘How might it work?'
- Model the use of language of time in conversations, for example ‘yesterday', ‘old', ‘past', ‘now' and ‘then'
- Use stories that introduce a sense of time and people from the past, or make books of events they have experienced, such as a visit to the summer fair or a shopping expedition.
