Early Years SEN toolkit - For all children with SEN

Activities, strategies and resources to support all children with SEN.

Local Offer Oxfordshire

Assessment, planning and recording templates/examples

Early support developmental journals are designed to help families and practitioners observe and record a child’s development and progress. These include:

SEN support

Activities and strategies

These activities and strategies may be useful for any child with a special educational need. Some are written for parents but are equally relevant for use in settings.

Heuristic Play and Treasure baskets: Heuristic play was a term coined by a child psychologist Elinor Goldschmeid in the early 1980's. Heuristic play describes the activity of babies and children as they play with and explore the properties of 'objects'. These 'objects' are things from the real world - Heuristic play and treasure baskets (pdf format, 167Kb)

Treasure Basket - This explorative play supports children in developing their own sensory exploration of natural items and can advance the child’s developing understanding of cause and effect - Treasure baskets

Personal care

Dressing

Toileting

PromoCon offer advice and information on the whole range of childhood continence issues. They cover a range of issues for potty training a reluctant toddler to children with complex needs and bladder or bowel problems.

Resources

Early support resources
Early support produce a variety of information resources covering a wide range of different conditions, disabilities and difficulties, developed in response to feedback from families.

SEN and Disability in the Early Years Toolkit
4Children and the Council for Disabled Children (CDC) have produced a toolkit for SEN and disability in the early years. Each section of the toolkit provides a briefing on a particular aspect of the SEN and disability reforms as they apply to early years providers. Each section is based on the statutory requirements and the guidance from the early years, the SEN and the disability frameworks, and draws on a range of relevant practice guidance and other materials to provide an accessible guide to SEN and disability in the early years. Towards the end of most of the sections of the toolkit is a useful tool, an activity or a reflective task to support practitioners in applying the particular topic to their own setting.

Individual Intervention Record (doc format, 62Kb) It’s important to keep a record of the interventions provided for children with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (both at home and in their setting) alongside notes about the impact of the intervention. This form is designed to be used from the start i.e. as soon as the child’s needs have been identified so that the chronology of all the various interventions and how they have helped is collected in one place with costs included, if relevant.

Early Years Toolkit - Useful resources to help support early years settings.

Smooth Transition, to prepare for Transition, see the Early Years Foundation Stage Transition Pack and the Transition Action Plan for Children with SEN and disabilities (doc format, 127Kb)

Transition Checklist (pdf format, 100Kb)

School Readiness for Practitioners

School Readiness for Parents

Community around the setting (pdf format, 853Kb) a directory of services/agencies available to help settings

Questions to ask when you go to a doctor or hospital

Applying for an Education and Health Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA)

Examples of completed information that supports the EHCNA application -