Nursery World - EYFS Activities - Early Years on a Shoestring: Recycled, Upcycled…

Enabling environments full of rich, open ended learning resources are a vital feature of strong early years practice but how are we to provide that with an ever-diminishing budget? In this new series Shardi Vaziri provides ideas

My headteacher fondly introduces me as ‘The Skip Hunter’ for my habit of finding and repurposing things from the side of the street, along with hitting free furniture websites or collecting treasure from nature. I’ve slowly transformed my setting using these free, donated, reused, recycled, or upcycled furniture and resources. What’s more, these fabulous resources help to foster the children’s imagination and communication skills just as well, if not better, than many bought ones.

I believe you don’t need money to create opportunities for learning, just a bit of time and thought. Here are some tried and tested ideas from my classroom to start you thinking in a different way and working towards developing the setting you’ve always dreamed of:

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