Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives, and is fundamental to their cognitive development. Underpinning their personal development are the important attachments that shape their social world. Strong, warm and supportive 9 relationships with adults enable children to learn how to understand their own feelings and those of others. Children should be supported to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self, set themselves simple goals, have confidence in their own abilities, to persist and wait for what they want and direct attention as necessary. Through adult modelling and guidance, they will learn how to look after their bodies, including healthy eating, and manage personal needs independently. Through supported interaction with other children, they learn how to make good friendships, co-operate and resolve conflicts peaceably. These attributes will provide a secure platform from which children can achieve at school and in later life.

ELG: Self-Regulation

• Show an understanding of their own feelings and those of others, and begin to regulate their behaviour accordingly.
• Set and work towards simple goals, being able to wait for what they want and control their immediate impulses when appropriate.
• Give focused attention to what the teacher says, responding appropriately even when engaged in activity, and show an ability to follow instructions involving several ideas or actions.

ELG: Managing Self

• Be confident to try new activities and show independence, resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge.
• Explain the reasons for rules, know right from wrong and try to behave accordingly.
• Manage their own basic hygiene and personal needs, including dressing, going to the toilet and understanding the importance of healthy food choices.

ELG: Building Relationships

• Work and play cooperatively and take turns with others.
• Form positive attachments to adults and friendships with peers.
• Show sensitivity to their own and to others’ needs.

Birth to Three Years Old

• Be a role model- Modelling emotions and positive behaviours.
• Responding to emotions and behaviours to develop trust between the child and adult.
• Asking open-ended questions to help develop problem-solving skills.
• Using social stories to talk about feelings.
• Encouraging children to try new things and learn about how much they can do.
• Playing games that help us to take turns, winning and losing.
• Learning to share and negotiate through games.
• Teaching children to regulate their own emotions and develop resilience.

Nursery 3 - 4 Years Old

• Read books about feelings and ask children how the characters are feeling
• Read books in which basic character virtues are demonstrated. 
• Ask children which character virtues the characters are demonstrating.
• Teach children some kind words, e.g. helpful, loving, patient and caring.
• Encourage children to come up with their own examples of when they have been kind.
• Visitors describe their jobs using props to demonstrate.

Reception 4-5 Years Old

• Discuss with children what they might do if they are experiencing strong feelings.
• Supporting children to use kind words, using the Golden Rules.
• Supporting children to model sentences about how we are feeling.
• Ask children to compare characters from books they have read.
• Sorting characters into groups according to who has demonstrated particular character virtues.
• Ask children what kind of jobs they might like to do and why.
• Talk about spending and saving.

Birth to Three Years Old – babies, toddlers and young children will be learning to:

• Turn towards familiar sounds. They are also startled by loud noises and accurately locate the source of a familiar person’s voice, such as their key person or a parent.
• Gaze at faces, copying facial expressions and movements like sticking out their tongue. Make eye contact for longer periods.
• Watch someone’s face as they talk.
• Copy what adults do, taking ‘turns’ in conversations (through babbling) and activities. Try to copy adult speech and lip movements.
• Enjoy singing, music and toys that make sounds.
• Recognise and are calmed by a familiar and friendly voice.
• Listen and respond to a simple instruction.
• Make sounds to get attention in different ways (for example, crying when hungry or unhappy, making gurgling sounds, laughing, cooing or babbling).
• Babble, using sounds like ‘baba’, ‘mamama’.
• Use gestures like waving and pointing to communicate.
• Reach or point to something they want while making sounds.
• Copy your gestures and words.
• Constantly babble and use single words during play.
• Use intonation, pitch and changing volume when ‘talking’.
• Understand single words in context – ‘cup’, ‘milk’, ‘daddy’.
• Understand frequently used words such as ‘all gone’, ‘no’ and ‘bye-bye’.
• Make themselves understood and can become frustrated when they cannot.
• Start to say how they are feeling, using words as well as actions.
• Start to develop conversation, often jumping from topic to topic.
• Develop pretend play: ‘putting the baby to sleep’ or ‘driving the car to the shops’.
• Use the speech sounds p, b, m, w. Pronounce: l/r/w/y  f/th  s/sh/ch/dz/j, multi-syllabic words such as ‘banana’ and ‘computer’
• Listen to simple stories and understand what is happening, with the help of the pictures.
• Identify familiar objects and properties for practitioners when they are described: for example: ‘Katie’s coat’, ‘blue car’, ‘shiny apple’.
• Understand and act on longer sentences like ‘make teddy jump’ or ‘find your coat’.
• Understand simple questions about ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘where’ (but generally not ‘why’).

3 and 4-year-olds will be learning to: 

• Enjoy listening to longer stories and can remember much of what happens.
• Pay attention to more than one thing at a time, which can be difficult.
• Use a wider range of vocabulary.
• Understand a question or instruction that has two parts, such as: “Get your coat and wait at the door”.
• Understand ‘why’ questions, like: “Why do you think the caterpillar got so fat?”
• Sing a large repertoire of songs.
• Know many rhymes, be able to talk about familiar books, and be able to tell a long story.
• Develop their communication but may continue to have problems with irregular tenses and plurals, such as ‘runned’ for ‘ran’, ‘swimmed’ for ‘swam’.
• Develop their pronunciation but may have problems saying: some sounds: r, j, th, ch, and sh , multi-syllabic words such as ‘pterodactyl’, ‘planetarium’ or ‘hippopotamus’.
• Use longer sentences of four to six words.
• Be able to express a point of view and to debate when they disagree with an adult or a friend, using words as well as actions.
• Start a conversation with an adult or a friend and continue it for many turns.
• Use talk to organise themselves and their play: “Let’s go on a bus... you sit there... I’ll be the driver.”

Children in reception will be learning to: 

• Understand how to listen carefully and why listening is important.
• Learn new vocabulary.
• Use new vocabulary through the day.
• Ask questions to find out more and to check they understand what has been said to them.
• Articulate their ideas and thoughts in well-formed sentences.
• Connect one idea or action to another using a range of connectives.
• Describe events in some detail.
• Use talk to help work out problems and organise thinking and activities, and to explain how things work and why they might happen.
• Develop social phrases.
• Engage in storytimes.
• Listen to and talk about stories to build familiarity and understanding.
• Retell the story, once they have developed a deep familiarity with the text, some as exact repetition and some in their own words.
• Use new vocabulary in different contexts.
• Listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound.
• Learn rhymes, poems and songs.
• Engage in non-fiction books.
• Listen to and talk about selected non-fiction to develop a deep familiarity with new knowledge and vocabulary.