Polly put the kettle on. Learning about then and now, past and present

It is really important that your Foundation Stage teachers are not put off by the label ‘history’. They could quite rightly argue that the word does not exist in their Early Years curriculum. On the other hand, few will resist the need to talk about ‘the past’ and to help children grasp the notion of evidence. Indeed, they can make little progress in history if these early concepts are not laid down.
This section offers a few simple lessons which deal with the main concepts, viz:
• there was a past we talk about ‘then and now’
• life in the past was different from the present but is still recognisable in many respects
• we can look for clues from the past to help work out what it was like