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.

EYFS Development Matters Statements Children in Reception

• Explore, use and refine a variety of artistic effects to express their ideas and feelings.
• Return to and build on their previous learning, refining ideas and developing their ability to represent them.
• Create collaboratively, sharing ideas, resources and skills.
• Listen attentively, move to and talk about music, expressing their feelings and responses.
• Watch and talk about dance and performance art, expressing their feelings and responses.
• Sing in a group or on their own, increasingly matching the pitch and following the melody.
• Develop storylines in their pretend play.
• Explore and engage in music making and dance, performing solo or in groups.

Early Learning Goals

Creative with Materials

• Safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques, experimenting with colour, design, texture, form and function.
• Share their creations, explaining the process they have used.
• Make use of props and materials when role playing characters in narratives and stories.

Being Imaginative and Expressive

• Invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories with peers and their teacher.
• Sing a range of well-known nursery rhymes and songs.
• Perform songs, rhymes, poems and stories with others, and (when appropriate) try to move in time with music.