The Yellow Door Blog

Subitising and Early Number Sense in Early Years Children

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Subitising is a term that was coined by the theorist Piaget and defined the ability to instantaneously recognise the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them. An example often used to explain this, is to think of a die – we immediately recognise the number of dots without having to count each one individually.

subitising1 Studies have found that most adults can subitise groups of items up to five. This is known as perceptual subitising. Beyond five, other mental strategies come into play for identifying the number of items in a group without counting them individually. These require some understanding of grouping and basic mathematics. For instance, when we see six dots on a die, we actually break this down into two groups of three which, when combined, gives us six. This is known as conceptual subitising and is an essential element for developing mathematical skills.

The Great Toast Experiment

Each set of Sensory Stones includes a fantastic leaflet full of activities written by play specialist Wendy Usher. The ‘mark making with toast’ idea caught our attention – see step-by-step details of the activity below along with our results!

Introducing Sensory Stones

Sensory Stones enable children to have sensory experiences by experimenting with raised and indented shapes and patterns. Here, author and play specialist Wendy Usher shares her ideas on introducing the stones into a setting and some sensory play activities.

Super Powered Learning at Eastfields Nursery

It’s no secret that we love superheroes at Yellow Door and it seems we are not alone! Our friends at Eastfield Nursery in Northampton have recently run a superhero topic and they’ve written an amazing blog which they have kindly allowed us to share.

What Happens when a Bear Comes to Visit?

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen is a firm favourite for many settings. In this blog, independent literacy consultant Jane Bunting, explores the idea of the bear coming to visit…

A Bear Related Book List

There are a huge number of bear stories. Here are a few bear necessities for any book corner. The children will have their own favourites too.

Phonics Pebbles – Blending and Segmenting

Get the most out of our Phonics Pebbles with these great ideas and activities from teacher and consultant, Christine Barker.

It is important for children to begin segmenting and blending simple VC and CVC words early in their phonemic development, and to continue practising this skill. As digraphs and trigraphs are introduced, children will more easily see how phonemes work together to make one sound. The Phonics Pebbles help with this as each phoneme is on a single pebble.

The pebbles can be used for simple wordbuilding games, such as the ones that follow.

Phonics Pebbles – Phoneme Recognition Games

Teacher and consultant, Christine Barker shares some ideas for using our Phonics Pebbles.

Yellow Door’s Phonics Pebbles offer an engaging visual and tactile way of introducing young children to letters and sounds. They can be used in many ways, both indoors and outside, to support phonics teaching, and give children opportunities to independently show you what they can do.

Phonics – A Multisensory Approach

Come Alive Phonics author, Tim Harding, explains why a multisensory approach is essential for successful phonics teaching.

Set up your own superhero training camp

Helen Bromley invites you to unleash the positive power of superhero play for some powerful learning outdoors. Superheroes and superhero play hold enormous fascination for most young children. Using the outdoor area to explore a superhero theme allows children to ‘go large’, being messier, louder and moving around with greater freedom than is possible inside.