Building upon the foundational competencies acquired in “Basic Care Skills”, this course is meticulously structured to advance students' practical knowledge and application within a home setting. It specifically addresses the nuanced demands of individualized childcare. A central tenet of professional nanny care, the course expands on a variety of essential skills. These include the appropriate methods for managing diverse hair types, the steps to take upon the discovery of head lice, and the techniques for ensuring that a child’s nails are safely trimmed, and ears are gently cleaned. Crucial self-care skills such as oral hygiene are emphasized, preparing students to not only support daily dental care routines but also to adeptly handle a child’s initial medical appointments with dentists or doctors. Going beyond basic care, the course delves into fostering independence and making informed choices through structured sleep routines, as well as the orchestration of tranquil and engaging bath times and mealtimes. These practices are aimed at nurturing a child’s autonomy, decision-making capabilities, and respectful interactions with others. The comprehensive objectives of this course are twofold: to empower students with a robust set of intermediate care skills essential for nannies and to enable them to cultivate a serene and supportive environment. This nurturing backdrop is fundamental for encouraging a child’s self-governance and self-respect as integral components of their daily lives. Students will emerge with a well-rounded ability to facilitate a child’s holistic development and well-being through thoughtful, informed care practices.

Learning Objectives:

1. Advanced Personal Care Techniques: To master advanced personal care techniques for children, including the management of different hair types and the treatment and prevention of head lice.
2. Promote Hygienic Practices: To learn how to effectively ensure children maintain good hygiene with proper nail trimming and ear cleaning practices.
3. Support Oral Health: To understand and facilitate regular dental hygiene routines for children and provide compassionate support during their initial dental and medical visits.
4. Foster Autonomy in Self-Care: To encourage children's autonomy in personal care tasks, allowing them to make choices and develop self-help skills in a supportive environment.
5. Implement Structured Routines: To establish and maintain structured sleep, bath, and mealtime routines that promote self-regulation and respectful behavior.
6. Create Calm Environments: To develop strategies for maintaining a calm and soothing environment that supports a child’s ability to self-regulate throughout their daily routines.
7. Facilitate Informed Choices: To guide children in making informed choices about their personal care, fostering a sense of independence and respect for their preferences.
8. Enhance Communication Skills: To refine communication strategies that enable students to effectively discuss personal care routines with children, making them active participants in their care.
9. Manage First-Time Medical Experiences: To prepare for and manage a child’s first experiences with medical appointments, ensuring they are positive, informative, and free from anxiety.
10. Cultivate Respectful Interactions: To model and teach respectful interactions during personal care routines, reinforcing the importance of consent and personal boundaries.

Fundamental to Early Childhood degrees is that students have a critical understanding of theory in practice and how this can support children’s learning and development. Students will build an understanding of theories of development and how the environment can complement a child’s individuality and curiosity. Children have an intrinsic motivation to explore, and this, coupled with a rich imagination, makes for interesting inventions! This course will explore pedagogical and philosophical approaches that emphasize the importance of play, playfulness, and experiential learning. This will be applied to the home environment, including outdoor play, in promoting a child’s natural curiosity while celebrating their individuality. Students will synthesize this knowledge to justify their own environment and reflect on which pedagogies, philosophies, and theories most represent their early years practice. Every nanny needs to find the fun in everything, and learning is no exception. Students will explore the differences between true play and making learning fun and how enjoyment of learning opportunities can be facilitated. Consideration of early years curricula will also be explored along with this and how this can be applied in the home environment. In this course, special emphasis is placed on nurturing a child's comprehension and learning of mathematical concepts, recognizing that the foundation for math literacy begins early in life. Students will learn to introduce foundational mathematical ideas in ways that are intuitive and playful, yet impactful. We will explore strategies to weave mathematical thinking into everyday play and learning, ensuring that children develop a strong and positive relationship with math from the start. The aims of this course are to look at practical activities that promote skills in the subjects of literacy, science, mathematics, engineering, drama, art, and music. Observation will be considered alongside this, using provocative learning opportunities to facilitate learning, with consideration of the barriers to learning that the environment might provide for inclusion.

1. Integrate Theory and Practice: To develop a critical understanding of developmental theories and their practical application in fostering a child's learning and individual growth.
2. Understand Development in Context: To explore how different environments can enhance or hinder a child's development, with a focus on creating complementary spaces that encourage individuality and curiosity.
3. Promote Play and Creativity: To examine pedagogical and philosophical approaches that prioritize play, playfulness, and experiential learning, and how these can be encouraged in the home environment.
4. Apply Pedagogical Theories: To synthesize knowledge of various pedagogies, philosophies, and theories, and reflect on their application in personal early years practice.
5. Cultivate Early Mathematical Understanding: To develop the ability to introduce and reinforce foundational mathematical concepts in early childhood, fostering an intuitive and positive engagement with math through play and daily activities.
6. Incorporate Early Years Curricula: To understand the components of early years curricula and how to effectively implement them in home-based education settings.
7. Develop Mathematics Skills: To meet general education requirements for mathematics by engaging in practical activities that promote mathematical thinking and problem-solving in young children.
8. Foster Literacy and STEAM Skills: To design and implement activities that develop literacy and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) skills, integrating these into playful learning opportunities.
9. Conduct Observational Learning: To practice observation techniques to identify children's interests and learning styles, using these insights to facilitate inclusive and provocative learning opportunities.
10. Identify and Overcome Barriers: To recognize potential barriers within the learning environment that may affect a child’s inclusion and learning, and to develop strategies to overcome these barriers.

Children experience a range of transitions throughout childhood and a nanny should be there at every step to support and guide them through. The purpose of this course is to explore what a child may think, feel and experience when change occurs and the practical steps a nanny can take to support them and their families, in particular when a child is starting at a new setting such as a nursery or school, and how to support a child with separation anxiety. The purpose of the course is to explore what happens in children’s brains during the process of transition, and the practical steps that practitioners can take to support children through change both on a small horizontal scale and large vertical ones Students will explore practical strategies for supporting children in the transitions from cot to bed and from nappies to potty to toilet. These are both transitions that students are likely to experience in placement and in future practice. The aims of this course are to explore the key transitions and the strategies that support them in children’s homes. Students will learn the practical steps to take in supporting children from cot to bed and during toilet training, alongside the indicators that children are ready to make the change. Supporting parents with these transitions and managing conversations around these topics will also be explored and practiced. The aims of this course are for students to examine the practicalities of change, whether this is temporary or permanent. Planning for travelling with children both short and long term will be explored together with actions to take in the event of an emergency, such as delays, acts of terrorism or booking errors. On a larger scale, practical strategies for supporting children and families moving home (nationally or internationally) and new babies (through birth, adoption, fostering, surrogacy, and IVF) will be considered in a variety of contexts.

1. Understand Child Transition Psychology: To comprehend the psychological impact of transitions on children, including what they might think, feel, and experience during periods of change.
2. Support New Experiences: To equip students with strategies to support children as they start new educational settings, such as nursery or school, and to alleviate separation anxiety.
3. Facilitate Developmental Transitions: To learn the practical steps for guiding children through key developmental transitions, such as moving from a cot to a bed and from nappies to the toilet.
4. Identify Readiness for Change: To recognize the indicators that suggest a child is ready for transitions like toilet training and sleeping in a bed.
5. Communicate with Parents: To develop skills in effectively communicating with parents about their child’s transitions and the support strategies that can be employed.
6. Plan for Travel with Children: To plan for and manage travel with children, including preparing for short trips, long journeys, and addressing travel-related emergencies.
7. Navigate Emergency Situations: To prepare students to take appropriate actions in unexpected situations, including delays, travel interruptions, or emergencies.
8. Assist with Family Moves: To explore methods for supporting children and their families through the process of moving, whether it be nationally or internationally.
9. Support New Family Dynamics: To understand how to support children and families as they welcome new family members through birth, adoption, fostering, surrogacy, and IVF.
10. Promote Resilience in Children: To encourage and build resilience in children facing both small-scale and large-scale transitions, ensuring they have the support needed to adapt confidently to new circumstances.

Understanding the importance of how children learn and develop, along with how this is linked to theory, is core to a nanny’s work and the Early Childhood Studies. To provide appropriate play opportunities, students must firstly understand child development and the theory that frames it. This course will underpin the student’s understanding of child development and theory, an essential skill for working with young children and babies. It will also provide a foundation of child development and learning theories alongside pedagogical philosophies. This course will explore the core theories of learning from the classical to the contemporary, as well as the pedagogical practices adults might employ to provide the very best early years environments to support those developing brains. These ideas will be used to rationalize and critique resources and get students thinking about the theories and pedagogies that most align with their professional values and practice. Play is at the center of learning for children, and adults taking care of them need to know when to engage and when to step back. This course will consider the practical application of a variety of observation types undertaken in sessions. Heuristic play will be explored to establish the benefits of natural materials and real-life objects for children, as well as how schemas can be observed, assessed, and used for effective planning. In summary, the students will establish their role in play and how it can be facilitated effectively, and the types of play considered in this course will vary depending on current trends in the early years industry. This course looks at how play can be facilitated by early years professionals through an engaging environment. Students will learn observation skills and play types from cutting-edge research to support children’s curiosity and engagement with the world around them. Cognitive self-regulation or executive functioning provides adults and children with the fundamental skills and core competencies that enable them to become resilient and support their wellbeing. A nanny will use executive functioning skills daily to facilitate their role and they can also promote children’s executive functioning skills through play experiences, given that play acts as a powerful medium for promoting children’s executive functioning. This course will build on students’ knowledge and understanding about self-regulation, with a particular focus on cognition and executive functioning. This is explored through the lens of play and examines how play promotes the development of core life skills, including the characteristics of effective learning. By the end of the course, students will understand how play supports children’s brain development and learning. They will experience play opportunities that promote self-regulation and executive functioning and consider how to communicate effectively with families to support the needs of the child. Regarding playful environments, Students will consider the home environment as a place for displaying children’s achievements. This course focuses on celebratory responsibilities nannies may have, such as party planning, celebrating children’s learning in the home environment and fun ways to promote autonomy. By the end of the course, students will have practical party planning skills as well as being able to use the environment to effectively celebrate children’s individuality and progress.

Learning Objectives:

1. Enhance Executive Functioning Skills: To learn and apply executive functioning skills to enhance personal resilience and support child wellbeing in a nanny role.
2. Promote Cognitive Self-Regulation: To understand and promote cognitive self-regulation in children through structured and spontaneous play experiences.
3. Understand Play in Learning: To explore the role of play in the development of children’s core life skills and executive functioning.
4. Identify Characteristics of Effective Learning: To identify and cultivate the characteristics of effective learning through play-based activities.
5. Facilitate Brain Development Through Play: To recognize how different play opportunities support brain development and learning in children.
6. Communicate with Families: To develop strategies for communicating the importance of play in learning and self-regulation to families.
7. Create Playful Environments: To design environments that foster playful learning and celebrate children's achievements at home.
8. Celebrate Children’s Milestones: To organize and execute celebratory events, such as parties, that honor children's learning and development milestones.
9. Showcase Individuality and Progress: To utilize the home environment creatively to showcase and celebrate each child's individuality and developmental progress.
10. Comprehend Child Development Theories: To understand the fundamental theories of child development and how they frame our understanding of how children learn and grow.
11. Link Theory to Practice: To link theoretical knowledge with practical application, enhancing the ability to provide appropriate play opportunities for children.
12. Explore Learning Theories: To explore core learning theories, from classical approaches to contemporary insights, and their impact on early childhood education.
13. Assess Pedagogical Practices: To assess and critique various pedagogical practices and their effectiveness in supporting children's cognitive and emotional development.
14. Engage in Play Facilitation: To learn the balance between engaging with children in play and knowing when to step back to facilitate independent learning.
15. Conduct Observations: To conduct and analyze a variety of observation types to understand children's learning processes and developmental stages.
16. Utilize Heuristic Play: To understand and implement heuristic play using natural materials and real-life objects, appreciating their benefits for child development.
17. Apply Schemas in Planning: To learn how to observe, assess, and apply schemas in planning to support effective learning experiences for children.
18. Create Engaging Environments: To create environments that encourage children's curiosity and engagement, using cutting-edge research on play types and observation skills.