Loose Parts Play Toolkit
Providing practical guidance about loose parts play to those who work with children and young people of all ages – including childminders – and advocating the use of loose parts as an approach to developing play opportunities at home, outdoors and in the community.
This useful resource can be found on Membership Dashboard via the Learning Library.
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NASA Science for Kids
NASA Space Place's mission is to inspire and enrich children’s learning about space and Earth science online through fun games, hands-on activities, informative articles and engaging short videos.
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Scottish Government Online STEM Module
A STEM-based learning package has been developed by the Scottish Government in partnership with the University of the West of Scotland, which provides multi-media resources and activities for those working with children to help develop curiosity in the world around them.
(This link will take you straight to the sign-in page, where you should enter ‘STEM’ in the module search box to enrol for the STEM module.)
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Curriculum for Excellence Science Principles and Practice
Learning through play using the principles of the sciences, children and young people develop their interest in, and understanding of, the living, material and physical world around them. Engaging in a wide range of collaborative investigative tasks, enables them to develop important skills to become more creative, inventive and enterprising in the future.
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Scottish Schools Education Research Centre (SSERC)
Providing support for science and technology education across Scotland. SSERC have developed some activities that allow you to easily engage with your children at home through easily accessible STEM videos. These videos allow you to do the activity along with us or watch them together and then recreate the activity.
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Curriculum for Excellence
Scotland’s curriculum – Curriculum for Excellence – helps our children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21st century.
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Realising the Ambition: Being Me
Realising the Ambition: Being Me builds upon the original principles of Pre-Birth to Three and Building the Ambition, as this refreshed early years national practice guidance for Scotland presents key information about the characteristics of child development based on research and evidence.
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SSSC Open Badges
SCMA has partnered with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) to award Accredited Open Badges. These are digital certificates that recognise learning, achievement and success, which encourage reflective learning and improve to practice.
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SCMA Membership Dashboard and Learning Dashboard
For more information about reflective practice and writing reflective statements, there are useful resources and tools on the Membership Dashboard via the Learning Library. Browse our range of downloads, resources and tools – designed and tailored to childminders in Scotland.
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Make Sense
STEM resource from Guide Dogs which examines ‘finding the way through sensory play’ and includes engaging sessions on how the eye works and the benefits that daily exercise, good nutrition and sufficient sleep have on the body and on peoples’ eyesight.
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