Supporting persistence and developing motivation through cause and effect play – Early Years – Cognition and Learning
Last Updated - March 7, 2024
Supporting persistence and developing motivation through cause and effect play – Early Years – Cognition and Learning
Cause and effect play – adults may need to use verbal cues such as ‘Ready, Steady Go!’ or ‘One, two three!’ to prepare the child for a sudden action or noise.
Children are often more interested in people, their sounds and actions and are distracted by the ‘3-way attention demands’ when an object is part of the play. ‘People play’ may be a more successful way of achieving engagement such as ‘Row-Row, Round and Round the Garden etc.
Adults may need to model matching, stacking, posting and sorting activities using resources that the child can manipulate and succeed with.
Adults may need to adapt toys and objects to emphasise size, reduce choice and grade difficulty e.g. hoops onto wooden spoons instead of string and beads for threading. These are some of the ‘Small Steps to Learning’ from the Portage Model.
Adults may need to use a child’s special interest to introduce novel activities e.g. rolling/spinning toys in water play
The Attention Autism programme aims to support children with a range of communication and interaction difficulties, to develop and sustain looking and listening attention skills, in group situations:
Stage 4: Individual activities (to focus and sustain attention in a group, then transition shifting attention to individual activity and then refocus on the group).
Develop with the child, a secure ability to make clear choices between objects and activities by using object choices or picture choices – see Visual Support Guidance.
