Continuous Provision Vs Enhancements

Continuous Provision vs Enhancements; What’s The Difference?

 Written by - Laima @childledmagic

Buzzwords… education is full of them! If you are in an early years setting you may be familiar with the ones I will be discussing in today’s post. We all use continuous provision and enhancements on a daily basis… but what is the difference between them? How do they look within the environment? Why are they important?


So, I don’t know about you but I love food (I am basically a walking, talking carbohydrate). In my fridge, there are some staples that, not only do I always have, but that always live in the same place. I have my almond milk in the fridge door, my fruit and vegetables in the bottom drawer, my butter on the top shelf … this is your continuous provision. It is your basics; your staple ingredients. The things that, without, you could not really make any delicious meals from. They are the items that create the basis for your entire balanced diet. Not only that but if someone kept coming in and rearranging your whole fridge you would be quite confused, frustrated and it would take you a whole lot longer to be organised for your cooking. 


On my weekly shop, I might buy some extras such as fish, yogurts, halloumi… you know, all the jazzy snazzy stuff. These are the things that when you throw them into your basket they add a little bit of excitement to your day, and your meals. Your favourite chocolate pudding? In it goes. Those posh cheeses? In they go. These things change weekly; you do not buy the same ‘extras’ each week. You might fancy chocolate pudding one week and cheesecake the next. These are your enhancements.


What does this look like in the classroom? Well, of course it looks different for every teacher and cohort. I am going to explain a little about what I find to be best practice, what I have learned on my journey as FS Head of CP and Child Led Learning and what works best for my children and I. 


In every learning area, you will have both continuous provision and enhancements. Let’s start with continuous provision…


Your continuous provision is the basic items, which are kept out all year; however, they may change depending on your gap and strength analysis. Your gap and strength analysis is just a fancy term for ensuring that your continuous provision meets the needs of your children at that current time. For example, if you notice on a data drop that shape, space and measure is your lowest area, this would be reflected in your continuous provision. You may have two maths areas instead of one, place shape related items within your loose parts, have a focus on shape, space and measure questioning in your construction area… you get the idea.



Enhancements, or provocations, are your bells and whistles. They are the bits that ignite additional excitement, discussion and enquiry within your children. These enhancements work best when they are hands on concrete resources. So, if you are a theme based setting and your theme is ‘growing’ instead of printed pictures of plants, have a go at using real plants, pots and seeds instead. Enhancements can be part adult led and part child led. If a child shows a real interest in bees one day you may add some honey into the home corner cupboard the next day. Another reason enhancements are so important is that, if you are a theme based setting with some theme based enhancements, and your current theme is dinosaurs but ‘Bobby’ has no interest in dinosaurs, he still has a wide and varied range of resources readily available. 

In my opinion, enhancements work best when you have a mix of child-led resources and some concrete ‘theme based’ resources to allow your children to build on their knowledge of what you are currently teaching.

It is also worth noting that enhancements can become continuous provision if they are something that the children thoroughly engage with.



Before I leave I would like to give some examples of what would be continuous provision (the lists are by no means complete or extensive) and what would be an enhancement…

Creative area –

CP = paint, felt tips, paint brushes, glue sticks, different types of paper, stampers

Enhancement = fruit and vegetables to explore printing techniques

Maths area –

CP = counting bears, rulers, number lines, cubes, Numicon, 3D shapes

Enhancement = different sized flowers in pots to explore measuring height if the current theme was growing

Writing area (I try and have writing resources spread throughout every area) –

CP = note pads, pencils, felt tips, whiteboards, clip boards, whiteboard pens, chalk, crayons

Enhancement = small empty paper booklets with a photo on the front as a writing stimulus



If you are still unsure on how you are using continuous provision and enhancements in your setting, a good idea is to look at your learning areas and think… ‘If I took away the enhancements, what would I have left?’ if the answer is ‘nothing’ then you simply have enhancements and no continuous provision.



Finally, THANK YOU! Thank you for taking the time to read this post. As you can possibly tell (!) I am incredibly passionate about continuous provision and child led learning. 

You can find me on Instagram @childledmagic and my DMs are always open for discussion, advice or any questions you have related to what I have written in this post.