Foundation Stage history curriculum

Intrigued as to what your child will do in class? Here’s some examples of the ways history is brought to life for younger students:

• 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 describe and draw the changes over time.
   
• Children might bring in items from home to talk about, such as old toys their grandparents played with when they were little.

• 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 help them to differentiate between past and present by growing plants or looking at photographs of their life. Talk about past and present events in their own lives and in those of other members of the family or friends.
   
• Encourage 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?'
   
• Use language relating to time in conversations, for example, ‘yesterday', ‘old', ‘past', ‘now' and ‘then'.
   
• Read stories that introduce a sense of time and people from the past.