How to create an 'Enabling Environment' at home

If you follow us on Instagram, you may have spotted or heard me talking about creating an 'enabling environment' a few times, as that's what my aim is for Isaac at home. It's a more commonly used term within Nurseries and Early Years classrooms, however, there is no reason why our homes can't be places to foster children's skills and development too.

Why have an Enabling Environment?

From birth, children actively seek out information about how the world works, and the environments they are in are so much more than just the physical space. The environment plays a key role in children's development - supporting them, extending them, challenging them and moving their learning on. It's vital that the environment they're in is safe, as well as somewhere that makes them feel comfortable and secure, as this is when children will explore, take risks and challenge themselves - subsequently encouraging learning and development. Opportunities for trial and error, exploration, questioning, invention and experimentation develop in play within the environment, even from a very early age.

So, what is an Enabling Environment?

An enabling environment is a place that is child-centred, where adults value little ones' independence whilst also wanting to help meet their individual needs. By providing rich, varied environments for our children to grow in, allows them to become resilient, capable, confident and self-assured. In Nurseries and other Early Years settings, Enabling Environments are often thought about in three stages - the 'Emotional' environment (how a space feels), the Indoor environment and the Outdoor environment. With most of us being lucky to have outside space at home, it is possible to facilitate our child's development at home by thinking about HOW our homes and gardens are set up.

How do we create an Enabling Environment?

We share our homes with our children, and therefore it is important to note that it is also necessary for adults to have spaces just for them. However, the spaces for our children and those we share together can be more beneficial to their learning and development IF we ensure they are 'enabling'.

• Ensure the environment is SAFE. This is the most important step. Get down to your child's height, or on your hands and knees, and ensure that everything in their area is not going to cause them harm. They need to able to have the freedom to explore and 'be' in spaces that are 'Yes', rather than telling them no to this, no to that all the time.

• Create spaces that are warm, welcoming, inviting, as well as provide your little one with a sense of belonging. Adding plants, lighting such as fairy lights or small lamps, soft furnishings such as blankets and cushions, creating nooks, cosy corners, are all ways to make spaces look warm and inviting. Have things that you know will spark excitement and interest in your little one displayed in their eye-line, alongside family photos, name-plaques, bunting etc that all show that this space is for them. Use language to highlight it's their space, or a space you share together - "I love that we can share our garden together." "Look, we know this space is yours because it has your name here, can you see? I love being able to play with you in this space."

Outdoors, this could be adding things like a play space, a flower bed, a vegetable patch etc that belongs to your child and they help you to maintain/use. Even something as simple as a windmill could be a way of showing you're thinking about including them in the garden. Let them help you create it if they're old enough to - ask them how they would like it to be and how it could be made special.

• Ensure toys & resources are accessible by having them child height. They need to be able to access and choose these independently without an adult having to 'get them out' for them. Have designated places - whether these be labelled shelves, baskets, tubs etc, where it is clear and simple to know where to put things back when finished with. Having pictures as well as written labels gives children independence when finding and returning things from a young age. Anything that needs significant adult supervision, or isn't suitable for little ones, store out of reach or locked away so that there isn't even the temptation (& you don't have to keep saying no!)

• Provide interesting AND familiar resources and toys. Allow your little one to decide what they want to play with, where they want to play with it, and who they want to play with - as long as these decisions of course are safe and sensible. Giving children freedom within limits allows them to follow rules and boundaries necessary to keep them safe, as well as develop their autonomy, self-assurance and confidence to be independent. It's also important to add that we as adults allow children to play and interact with their toys and resources how they want to - again, within safe and sensible limits, as often the way we expect things to be used, aren't how a child will see it! Exploring and experimenting for themselves is key, though there are times and places for modelling also when we want to assist children in moving their learning and development forwards if they aren't showing signs of doing this themselves.

• Adults should be warm and empathetic - modelling that is is okay to express feelings, and that our child's feelings are accepted and understood - promoting their feeling of being valued, accepted and supported. Adults can of course interact and model play and exploration, but it is also important that sometimes we just step back, watch and observe. Following on from the labelling mentioned above, allow your little one to be independent in finding what they need for their play and discovery - this may take some modelling of 'looking & searching' to start with, as this is a skill children need to learn, bit involve them in the process rather than getting things for them. This way, next time, they'll be more set up to do it themselves!

• Change the environment dependent on your child's interests and their developing needs. Keeping the basic 'geography' of the space is important as this helps the child to feel safe with known constants (eg. basket of books always present, but books in the basket changed to match interests / shelf of toys always present, but toys on the self changed to facilitate next development skills). You'll see that I am always changing up Isaac's play space - rotating toys and resources in and out as his skills and developmental needs change.

• Have designated areas - this can be done as actual physical areas if you are lucky enough to have a big play space or room, or done on a much smaller scale like we have done for Isaac. Isaac has baskets and spots which contain specific toys and resources - his favourites, books, developmentally focused toys etc. If you have a larger space, perhaps consider having zones - a creative zone, a construction zone, a role-play zone, in which the resources are kept specific to that type of play (although, resources do not have to be kept in this zone... you might need paper and pens from the creative zone in the role play to make a sign for your puppet show!!).

• Encourage the returning of objects and tidying up. Practise this together - model how to find where something should go back and how to do it with care. Encourage children to return what they're using BEFORE moving onto something new (although of course, with younger children, this is more tricky!)

• And finally... REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW. Stand back, observe, watch. Think, what skills is my little one working on at the moment? What are they trying to master? Is the environment set up to enable them to work on these? Is there anything that could be added? Does anything need taking away, swapping, changing, altering? Are they not drawn to a certain zone/basket/space? How could I make it more inviting, more welcoming, more exciting?

A home environment is of course different in size and scale to a Nursery or other EYFS setting, however an Enabling Environment is totally create-able at home! Are you going to have a go? Do you already have aspects that are ’enabling’ already? Let us know in the comments down below!