Dominic Gunn

Blow-torching food 🔥

Is this to my dinner what Little Wandle or Read, Write Inc is to literature and poetry? 😶

The Affordable Daycare That Keeps Parents Close At Little Break, parents get work done on-site while others help care for their kids, keeping costs down and making sure moms and dads don't miss any milestones.

Co-working space with adjacent childcare. Do we have this anywhere in UK?

(Thanks to Reasons to be Cheerful)

reasonstobecheerful.world/little-break...

Pride in Place Strategy The Pride in Place Strategy will help build stronger communities, create thriving places and empower local people.

Look at the work that’s gone into this, with other connected policies, vision and potentially £5billion of resourcing…

www.gov.uk/government/p...

The steady stream of organised and consulted studies and policies by current Govt. genuinely intended to repair this country and its communities rather than seek personal gain or delight in purveying cruelty, barely gets a mention. We might not all agree with these, but ‘they’ are not all the same.

Well this is nice.

And, no, you won’t hear about it on the newstainment programmes or phone-ins.

Including and Supporting All Children’ in Early Years…with me and Tamsin Grimmer.

25th August 2026 - a perfect start to the new academic year (or culmination of the last, for those of us who don’t close for summer holidays!)

Just one of the valuable CPD events available through Early Education.

In this month’s issue, our Zeitgeister Caspar Henderson reminds us that we share a ‘play equation with penguins (thanks to John Mitchinson)
PLAY=joy+learning

December’s Sleight of Hand On Time, Caregiving, and the Pressure to Be Merry

Words that many feel but beautifully, delicately put by Maya C Popa

The 12 Days of Early Years Christmas advice | Dominic Gunn The 12 Days of Year R Christmas! I’m privileged to have enjoyed seeing so many children, including those with particular needs, make the transition to school yet again over the last four months. So ...

Transition to Year R

Good work, everyone!

Here are some tips based on my findings since September 😉

The 12 Days of Early Years Christmas | Dominic Gunn The 12 Days of Year R Christmas! I’m privileged to have enjoyed seeing so many children, including those with particular needs, make the transition to school yet again over the last four months. So ...

Thanks to all those who enjoyed my 12 Days of Early Years Transition to Year R Christmas posts🎄

I’ve put them all on one page on the link below - let me know if i’ve forgotten something!

(and I do know this starts on 25th, just lining up the gifts early 😂)

🎁HAPPY EARLY YEARS CHRISTMAS everyone🎇

On the 12th Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Join or at least engage with trusted organizations like: Early Education, Froebel Trust, PEDAL, TACTYC... These will guide and fuel your practice and ensure you can articulate your pedagogy to senior leaders.

…and this gives us the opportunity for sustained shared-thinking during play 💫

On the 11th Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Free-flow, outdoor learning, continuous provision, and ‘flow’ overlap but are not the same. Long child-led periods, with agency, enabled across environments, is a more helpful thought for you professionally.

On the Tenth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄EYFS is a sensory curriculum, to be presented in a sensory environment. Before you timetable sensory circuits or buy a ‘sensory room’, ensure you are confident about your ordinarily available sensory provision.

On the Ninth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Do you really need all those transitions during the school day?
The answer is ‘No’ and some will be educationally damaging. But some might be necessary, so make sure you know which is which.

On the Eighth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Your children can’t see the visual communication aids when they are in the cupboard.

(Not being over-critical - I’ve done it🤦‍♂️But we mustn’t).

On the Seventh Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Sing, Sing, Sing…and Sign!
It’s much easier and more effective to sign for the whole class - no need to wait for Makaton training first (although recommended when the opportunity arises)

On the Sixth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Children should not be directed to copy letter shapes before they have secured handwriting prerequisites.
Ensure you know what these are and which unique child is still developing in this area.

On the Fifth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Systematic Synthetic Phonics lessons as sole or even primary method for teaching reading and spelling will fail on average about 20% of your class. So don’t subject them to additional phonics catch up lessons.

On the Fourth Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄When you have completed the DfE Child Development training modules (and you should) ask yourself for each child ‘What is developmentally meaningful?’ (Thanks to Kerry Murphy/ Diverse Pathways).

Thank you Sue. It’s nice to know you’re out there!

On the Third Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄What does a Dojo (or your chosen extrinsic reward system) give a child that your loving, honest, connected relationship does not?

On the Second Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Did you know in Reception that the title is still ‘Keyperson’, not ‘Keyworker’? And it is statutory?

And there is a good reason for this?

On the First Day of Transition to Year R Christmas, my Early Years Advisor said to me…

🎄Ask yourself if a commercial whiteboard programme making children sit and subitise at a level they already understood 18 months ago is necessary.

Ace!

Integrated Early Writing, Talk and Physical Development Audit Tool This audit tool aligns with the DFE non-statutory writing framework(2025) and the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage (2021). It draws on a wealth of research to provide a toolkit for those working...

A few people have asked about the audit tool I've developed, aligned to the DFE writing framework. I've made it available here:
www.lulu.com/shop/ruth-swailes/integrated-early-writing-talk-and-physical-development-audit-tool/ebook/product-v8qn2z9.html?q=integrated+early+writing&page=1&pageSize=4

Educational Assessment EYFS to KS1 (Embracing probability and rejecting datafication… … with the help of a toy balloon)

Yr R and Assessment.

If you’re feeling that we over-assess ‘progress’ in EYFS…that’s because we do!

A fun, provocation with the help of a toy balloon and Carlo Rovelli here:

Brotastic Bubblenomics by Carole Cadwallader.

Sometimes we have to work hard to make visual aids work. But when we do…

open.substack.com/pub/broligar...