EYFS Development Matters Statements Birth to Three

• Show attention to sounds and music.
• Respond emotionally and physically to music when it changes.
• Move and dance to music.
• Anticipate phrases and actions in rhymes and songs, like ‘Peepo’.
• Explore their voices and enjoy making sounds.
• Join in with songs and rhymes, making some sounds.
• Make rhythmical and repetitive sounds.
• Explore a range of sound-makers and instruments and play them in different ways.
• Notice patterns with strong contrasts and be attracted by patterns resembling the human face.
• Start to make marks intentionally.
• Explore paint, using fingers and other parts of their bodies as well as brushes and other tools.
• Express ideas and feelings through making marks, and sometimes give a meaning to the marks they make.
• Enjoy and take part in action songs, such as ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.
• Start to develop pretend play, pretending that one object represents another. For example, a child holds a wooden block to her ear and pretends it’s a phone.
• Explore different materials, using all their senses to investigate them. Manipulate and play with different materials.
• Use their imagination as they consider what they can do with different materials.
• Make simple models which express their ideas.

EYFS Development Matters Statements Three and Four Year Olds

• Take part in simple pretend play, using an object to represent something else even though they are not similar.
• Begin to develop complex stories using small world equipment like animal sets, dolls and dolls houses etc.
• Make imaginative and complex ‘small worlds’ with blocks and construction kits, such as a city with different buildings and a park.
• Explore different materials freely, to develop their ideas about how to use them and what to make.
• Develop their own ideas and then decide which materials to use to express them.
• Join different materials and explore different textures.
• Create closed shapes with continuous lines, and begin to use these shapes to represent objects.
• Draw with increasing complexity and detail, such as representing a face with a circle and including details.
• Use drawing to represent ideas like movement or loud noises.
• Show different emotions in their drawings and paintings, like happiness, sadness, fear etc.
• Explore colour and colour-mixing.
• Listen with increased attention to sounds.
• Respond to what they have heard, expressing their thoughts and feelings.
• Remember and sing entire songs.
• Sing the pitch of a tone sung by another person (‘pitch match’).
• Sing the melodic shape (moving melody, such as up and down, down and up) of familiar songs.
• Create their own songs or improvise a song around one they know.
• Play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas.