Busy Things is an online subscription-based service carrying educational activities for young children.

Q&D has already developed over ninety activities aimed at Early Years and SEN pupils in the form of our CD-ROM titles. This year we've been busy converting these activities for online delivery through Busy Things. Subscribers will have access to all our existing Early Years software with a wide range of configuration options plus regular updates and new activities introduced every month.

Busy Things activities give as much emphasis to nurturing creative development – to providing opportunities for exploring, discovery, experimentation, and sensory development – as they do to supporting the more formal requirements of the Early Years curriculum.

All the activities in Busy Things link to the Early Learning Goals and other Development Matters objectives within the Communication Language and Literacy, Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy, Knowledge and Understanding of the World and Creative Development areas of learning and development.

The literacy activities also link to Phases One, Two and Three of Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics and the Jolly Phonics scheme of work

Within the site activities are arranged in the following areas of learning:

Communication Language and Literacy
· Traditional Tales
· Letters and Sounds Phase 1
· Letters and Sounds Phases 2 and 3 - Letters and their Sounds
· Letters and Sounds Phases 2 and 3 - Blending and Segmenting
· Letters and Sounds Phases 2 and 3 - Listening to and Reading Words
· General Literacy

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
· Numbers as Labels and for Counting
· Calculating
· Shape, Space and Measures

Knowledge and Understanding of the World
· Exploration and Investigation

ICT and Creative Development
Busy Things is a great first introduction to ICT. Each activity is easy and rewarding to use, helping to build confidence in the novice computer user.

The Teacher settings screen provides ‘behind the scenes’ access to all the Busy Things activities.

Teachers can quickly add activities of their choice into the Favourites section of the Activities page. This provides them with a quick route to select a number of games from any area of learning.

Each activity has a related information screen which describes how that activity is played and specifies the curriculum topics it supports. Many activities cover topics in more than one area of the EYFS curriculum.

Most activities have configuration options ensuring that teachers can tailor them to suit different learning abilities.

Teachers can create groups and customise Busy Things for each group’s particular use. They can choose which activities are available for a group and adjust their settings. The group is given its own user name, and when its members log in with this user name and the school password they will be able to access only the activities and settings the teacher has made available to them.
 
3 St. James' Court, Friargate, Derby DE1 1BT
phone 01332 364963 | fax 01332 201878 | info@q-and-d.co.uk
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