Nursery World - Two-year-olds: Enabling Environments

Understanding both physical and psychological environments is key when creating areas for two-year-olds. Julia Manning-Morton explains how settings' management of this impacts on children's well-being.

If settings are to meet the needs of two-year-olds in funded places, it is essential that they address both the psychological and physical aspects of the environment, as both are fundamental to the quality of provision.

The values and beliefs that we hold as individuals and as practitioners underpin our pedagogical approach and it is this approach - how things are done - that forms the psychological environment in settings (Manning-Morton 2006, 2013).

We experience the psychological environment mentally and emotionally, and while it is invisible, this has a major impact on the well-being of children, families and practitioners and what they learn about themselves and each other. Central to this environment are relationships and interactions (Manning-Morton 2013).

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