It may not be new to us as practitioners that our interactions with the children are essential to the children’s learning and development and looking at the subject of self-regulation (which includes emotional as well as cognitive regulation) interactions and building a strong relationship with us as practitioners is absolutely essential. So, looking at self-regulation from the aspect of continuous provision may seem a bit off topic.
However, continuous provision is an essential element to our early years practice and how we set it up has a huge effect on whether a child is able to regulate their emotions and focus their attention and therefore engage in their learning. Birth to 5 Matters guidance states that we need to “Create an environment that makes self-regulation manageable, structured in a predictable way that is physically and emotionally safe for children to explore and take risks without unnecessary stressors.”
Self-regulation
The Education Endowment Foundation EEF and the EYFS Development Matters, and various other publications, have highlighted the importance of having strategies for self-regulation in our practice. The EEF states that “the development of self-regulation and executive function is consistently linked with successful learning, including pre-reading skills, early mathematics and problem solving.” EEF | Self-Regulation and Executive Function (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk)
So how can we promote Self-regulation in our continuous provision to create an enabling environment for all children?

Play
What does self-regulation look like in our continuous provision? The EEF states that “it is often easier to observe children’s current self-regulation capabilities when they are playing or interacting with a peer.”
So, let’s take a step back and look around our settings. Can we see children engaging in independent play? What are the children doing in the role play area? With the small world? In the sand and water trays?
Maybe you can see some children engaged in role play… Here we often see and hear children planning, organising and rehearsing roles. “Now let’s go on a picnic, you’re the baby and I’m the sister. We need to make sandwiches for the picnic.” EEF | Self-Regulation and Executive Function (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk) The approach of creating a community of collaborative learners is very much about providing role play opprtunities.
There may be children building with blocks, organising the different sized blocks in order to build a solid tower or building. The children aren’t just learning valuable mathematical skills, they are focusing their attention, thinking flexibly, monitoring what they are doing and adapting where necessary - all self-regulatory and executive function skills highlighted in the development matters.

Environment
So, how do we create environments best placed to help this happen?
We are all aware of the unique child. All children are different and unique, they have different interests, needs and stages of development. So an environment that supports them with plenty of opportunities to meet the interests and right level of challenge for your children is essential to involve every individual.
Resourcing your setting is key. A continuous provision, which is well resourced, where the resources are well labelled and easily accessible so that children know where things are and, helps to continue the flow of play and investigation supports development. It is also beneficial to put time into planning and preparing for enhancements to spark children’s interest that will develop learning over time. This can come from the children’s interests, an event or festival being celebrated in the community or something that is occurring in the children’s immediate environment e.g a windy day etc.
When thinking of resourcing your setting, think of quality over quantity. Having 10 babies in the home corner or 6 pencils of each colour in the mark making area can make the room cluttered and can increase stress in some children.
Another important element to creating continuous provision that can foster self-regulation strategies is how the room is laid out and what it looks like. This has an effect on how stimulated the children are. Young children are still developing their senses and can be overstimulated easily. Here it is good to think of the sound and colours in your settings.
If our settings are too noisy it can disrupt the children’s play and inhibit their thinking and talk. As adults we have learnt to “tune out” background noise, whereas children are much more sensitive to it. So put yourself in their shoes and assess the level of noise in the environment.
Additionally, colour can either be calming or stimulating. Children are often drawn to bright colours. But surrounding them with lots of bright primary colours can be over stimulating for many children. This can often lead to lack of concentration and hyperactivity so not a good environment for children to develop self-regulation skills.
Lastly, let’s not forget the importance of us as practitioners and what an essential role we play in the continuous provision and self-regulation. An enabling environment isn’t good enough without adult interaction, planning in the moment and scaffolding the children’s learning. When we get continuous provision right we can interact purposefully adding enhancements whilst following the lead of the child.
