Tapestry’s Activities feature was created to help educators and families with home and independent learning. It includes a catalogue of pre-made activities, a section for you to create and store your own activities, and a section for activities you have planned for specific children.
The Tapestry Activity Catalogue is a curated collection of ideas from our education team. These activities can be saved to your own catalogue or shared as planned activities with staff or parents. It’s a valuable resource designed to offer inspiration and support for practitioners.
You can easily select ideas from the Tapestry Catalogue, your personal collection, or create brand-new planned activities to share with staff and families. You can also copy planned activities into your personal collection to enhance your planning and support parents with home learning.
So let’s take a look at the Activities feature!
This section covers how to enable the Activities feature on your account.
Only Manager users have access to the Configuration menu, so Activities, as with all Tapestry features, can only be enabled by a manager type user and you need to be logged on to the browser version of Tapestry to be able to view the Configuration menu.
To enable Activities on your account, you will need to select the Configuration option and then select Features.
You should now see the full list of features available to enable on Tapestry. Find the Activities feature on the list. You can check if the feature is already enabled on your account, and if not you can select Enable to enable the Activities feature.
Once the Activities feature has been enabled, you can set User Permissions related to activities for both Relative and Staff users, using the relevant buttons.
For relatives, since relatives do not have access to the Tapestry Activities Collection, you can only set permissions for your own customised activities collection in Our Activities Collection and also Planned Activities, as you may decide to set activities for children to do at home.
To make any permission changes, simply click on the Edit button to the right of the relevant permission.
Setting Relative Permissions for relatives you wish to view and comment on Planned Activities, for example, will look like the screen options below:
Setting Staff Permissions for using Planned Activities, for example, will look like the screen options below:
Now that you have the Activities feature enabled, let’s look at the options you will have for using Activities!
As part of the Activities feature, the Tapestry education team have compiled a few activities that may be of interest to you. These can be added your own area – Our Activities Collection, which is covered in the next tab – and can also be used as a Planned Activity for children and their families.
Please note that the Activities Catalogue is only accessible to staff and not to relatives.
To access the Activities feature, you just need to select the Planning & Monitoring option on the Tapestry menu and then select Activities.
Then select the Tapestry Activities Catalogue at the top. You can Sort all the Activities in order of Newest or Oldest first, and you can also use the Search option to look for a specific activity.
If you are looking for a specific category for your activity, you can choose from the Category section. This will give you the option to search for the following:
- All
- Early Years Foundation Stage
- Special Educational Needs
- Key Stage 1
- Key Stage 2
Depending on the Category chosen, you will then be given a few other options.
- For Early Years Foundation Stage, you can first choose the EYFS Area from Any, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language or Physical Development. You will then be given the choice of the following Stage – Any, Birth to 3, Preschool or Reception.
- For Special Educational Needs, you can choose a SEND Subject from Any, Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Cognition or Communication.
- For Key Stage 1, you can first choose the Key Stage 1 Subject from Any, Maths or English. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Any, Year 1 or Year 2.
- For Key Stage 2, you can first choose the Key Stage 2 Subject from Any, Maths or English. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Any, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 or Year 6.
As mentioned above, the Stage option relates to EYFS activities which helps you narrow down the selection criteria. The options are shown below:
Click on an activity to view it. From the activity page you can you can use the Previous and Next options to toggle through the Tapestry Activities Catalogue. You can also see the name of the author of the activity and when it was created. You can also ‘Like‘ the activity if you wish.
When you click on the cog menu on this page, there is also the option to add the activity to your settings activity collection and to set this activity as a planned activity, if, of course, you have the user permission set to do this. There is another option to do this at the bottom of the page as well. You can also download any media attached to the the activity if you have been permitted to do so.
Please note if you are a staff member, your ability to save activities to your Activities Collection and to use an activity as a planned activity might be restricted by your setting’s user permissions.
Further down the page you will see any documents that you can click on to download, and you can view notes the author has added. You can also see the categories that this Activity has been added to.
As with the option to do so from the cog menu, if you have decided that you would like to use the Activity and if you have the permissions set to do so, you can choose one of two actions:
- Save to Our Activities Collection – this will take the Activity and place it in to the Our Activities Collection, which we will go into more detail in the next tab.
- Use this in a Planned Activity – this will allow you to set this activity as a Planned Activity, which we will go into in more detail in the final tab.
And that’s it! You now know where to find the Tapestry Activities Catalogue and how you can save these Activities to your own activities collection, if you have the permissions set to do so, and also how to use these Activities to set Planned Activities of your own.
Now let’s look at how you can create your own Activities collection at your setting!
Viewing activities in Our Activities Collection
As part of the Activities feature on Tapestry, the Our Activities Collection page is where you can add your own Activities.
You can access Our Activities Collection from the Planning & Monitoring option and selecting Activities.
Clicking on the Our Activities Collection tab will display all the Activities that have been added to your setting’s activities collection.
You can use the Filter & Sort Our Activities Collection button to filter the Activities based on different criteria, and also to sort them alphabetically or by creation date. You can also use the Search box to add text to help you find a specific Activity.
You can choose to Add an Activity to Our Activities Collection on the top of this page. We will cover how to add a new Activity to Our Activities Collection in the next section.
This page also shows whether an Activity here has been published for staff, for staff and relatives, or whether it is still in draft format.
If you are looking for a specific category for your activity, you can choose from the Category section. This will give you the option to search for All, Early Years Foundation Stage, Special Educational Needs, Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2.
Depending on the Category chosen, you will then be given a few other options.
- For Early Years Foundation Stage, you can first choose the EYFS Area from Any, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language or Physical Development. You will then be given the choice of the following Stage – Any, Birth to 3, Preschool or Reception.
- For Special Educational Needs, you can choose a SEND Subject from Any, Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Cognition or Communication.
- For Key Stage 1, you can first choose the Key Stage 1 Subject from Any, Maths or English. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Any, Year 1 or Year 2.
- For Key Stage 2, you can first choose the Key Stage 2 Subject from Any, Maths or English. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Any, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 or Year 6.
For example:
Click on an activity to view it. From here you can view any attached media, see it’s published status, and you can see the original author and the date the activity was created. You can you can use the back and forward arrows to toggle through your Activities Collection.
By selecting the cog button, if you have the required permissions, you can change the published status of the Activity (e.g., you could change it from Draft to Published for Staff and Relatives, or Published for staff). You can also View History of the activity and download any media attached to it from the cog menu.
You also have the ability to “Like” the activity, and, if you have have been granted the required permissions, you can Use this in a Planned Activity.
Further down the page you will see any documents that you can click on to download, and you can view notes the author has added. You can also see the categories that this Activity has been added to.
The Links to and from this activity in Our Activities Collection shows any Activities that have been planned from this Activity, helping you keep track of those children who have had it set previously. We cover these Planned Activities in more detail in the next tab.
If you scroll down to the final part of the page, you will see a place where another user (or relative if shared with them also) can add a question about the Activity, in the Questions and Discussion Points section. Like other discussion and comment areas in Tapestry, these comments will be visible to all other users of Tapestry who can see the Activity.
In the Actions section, if you have the permissions to do so, you can also Use this in a Planned Activity.
Now you have seen how to view the activities in Our Activities Collection, we will cover how to add a new activity of your own!
Adding an activity to Our Activities collection
If you have an Activity that you would like to keep for future reference, then it is possible to upload them to your collection, know as Our Activities Collection.
Only Staff users who have been given the required user permissions can add activities to Our Activities Collection; if you are a staff member, your ability to add or edit activities here may not be permitted due to your setting’s user permissions. (Please refer to the Enabling Activities tab for further information on permissions.)
You can access Our Activities Collection from the Planning & Monitoring option on the main menu and selecting Activities. You can then click on the Our Activities Collection tab to view the list of current Activities in the collection.
Selecting Add an Activity to Our Activities Collection takes you to the area where you can start adding your own Activity.
This will open the Add an Activity to Our Collection page.
As with most pages on Tapestry, you will not be able to save the Activity without giving it a title. In the Notes section, you can provide more of an explanation of the Activity and in the Options box, you can change the Status of the activity to be a Draft, Published for staff or Published for Staff, Relatives and Children. You can also select a different author from the staff list if you wish.
Scrolling down the page, you will see where you can add the Categories for you new Activity. Depending on where the Activity fits into the curriculum, you can select different Categories. From within each of the Categories below, you can select further stages. The Category options available are as before:
- For Early Years Foundation Stage, for each subject area from Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language or Physical Development, Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding of the World, Expressive Arts and Design or Other, you can then select the appropriate Stage as Birth to 3, Preschool or Reception. You can select more than one stage if you wish.
- For Special Educational Needs, you can choose from Physical Development, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Cognition, Communication or Other.
- For Key Stage 1, you can first choose the Key Stage 1 Subject from Maths, English, Science, Foundation Subjects or Other. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Year 1 or Year 2. You can select more than one year group if you wish.
- For Key Stage 2, you can first choose the Key Stage 2 Subject from Maths, English, Science, Foundation Subjects or Other. You will then be given the choice of the following Year Group – Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 or Year 6. You can select more than one year group if you wish.
The selections made here will help with the filters from the main Our Activities Collection page.
You can also upload media and documents to the activity, and if you make a mistake uploading these you can always delete these again. You can also link your new Activity to other Activities from your collection, or to observations and reflections.
When you are happy with your Activity, pressing Save at the bottom at top of the page will create your new Activity.
And that’s it! You now know how to add an activity to your Our Activities Collection.
You can set planned activities from scratch, or use activities from your collection or the Tapestry catalogue (provided that you have the correct user permissions set to do so).
You can access Planned Activities from the Planning & Monitoring option and selecting Activities.
From here, you will see all the Planned Activities that have been set, as well as seeing whether or not there have been any linked observations or whether it has come from an idea in the Our Activities Collection.
You can filter and sort the order of the Planned Activities and clicking on the cog icon shows you all the actions that can be done regarding the Planned Activity, as long as you have been given the permissions for these tasks.
Clicking on Plan an Activity takes you to the page where you can start adding your own Activity for the children from scratch.
When you start to Plan a new Activity you can first choose which children you wish to add to this Activity. As with other areas of Tapestry, you are able to select individual children, multiple children or groups.
To be able to save the Activity, you must give it a title. The notes section is where you can start to add details of the Activity, such as instructions, links to websites or resources that may be needed to complete the Activity.
In the Options area you can change the date, status and author of the activity. If you want to schedule an Activity to go out at a later time or date you just need to select the time/date from the Created/Scheduled option and then from the Status drop-down, select Schedule for staff, relatives and children.
If there are photos, videos or documents that you wish to include, these can be uploaded to the media section using the Add Files button. Once you have selected them, you just need to click on the Start Upload button.
You can crop or rotate photos by clicking on the Edit button, and change the order of media using the “up” and “down” arrows. Videos, audio clips, and pictures will still sit separately to documents when the page is saved, but you can change the order of them in each of their groups.
You can also delete media by selecting the Delete button, or in bulk, after ticking the relevant media, and then Delete Selected Media.
The image below shows you what you will see if you go to edit a photo that you have uploaded. You can crop and rotate the image and select Done to save the changes.
If you have created a planned activity from an activity in your Our Activities Collection, you will be warned that if you edit the photos, you need to make sure you are just editing the photo for this planned activity and not the activity in your collection. This can be done by checking the tick box next to ‘Edit a copy of the image so that the crop or rotate changes will only affect this page’.
On the final part of the Add a Planned activity screen, you have the Links section where you can link a Planned Activity to observations, reflections (if your setting has enabled reflections), Planned Activities and Activities from your own collection.
Once you are done, just remember to press Save at the top or bottom of the Add a Planned Activity screen to save and schedule your planned activity.
And that’s it! You can now add and schedule Planned Activities, based on a new activity that you have added or from existing Activities in the Tapestry Activities Catalogue or your setting’s own Our Activities Collection.
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