Run / Travel away from children across your sports island, have them follow you. – this gets their attention and makes it fun. This becomes even more effective when you give a location to run towards.​
You should always have your whistle on you in a session. This is a very effective tool to use to get a child’s attention in any setting. In a nursery, the most effective way is to teach your children to associate a short consistent whistle with the term ‘Freeze’. To help your children become familiar with the sound of a whistle, during your games blow your whistle to a random tune and have the children move around dancing / reacting to your whistle. This will then reduce any tears or negative reactions to your whistle when you use it to stop / start a game. – See Video Hub for example.​
Place hands on different body parts encouraging the children to copy ensuring you have the children's attention and they are watching you e.g. everyone put your hands on your head, shoulders, knees etc. – See Video Hub​
Changing the tone of your voice - Speaking in the same tone will often to lead to the children getting bored and losing focus. By varying the tones and volume of your voice, this will ensure that the children listen. One of the best examples is if they aren't listening to speak really quietly, this then means that for all the children to hear you they have to stop talking / messing around. – See Video Hub​
Favourite Games / Activities – every group of children and setting will have a favourite game that they love playing. Once you work out what this is, use it to your advantage. If the children behave and listen really well then you can reward them with their favourite game, if they don’t you play another game. This technique should be used sparingly as we don’t want to use and play the same games every week!​
Another technique to use is to pretend to the children that they are making you sad because they are not listening. When using this technique, for it be really effective get the Nursery staff to do it as well with you. The nursery staff are with the children all day every day and may have a stronger influence on the children than you so use them to your advantage. Once the children then begin to listen and realise that you and the staff aren't happy, have them say sorry and put thumbs up and promise to start listening. This emotional response will often work well especially if you are familiar with the group. – See Video Hub​