Research School Network: Working with parents to support children’s learning in the early years: hear from our partners In this final blog, we hear from the Grove Nursery School and the organisations KeepMi and EasyPeasy

In part four of this five-part series we hear from some of the partners we worked with and learnt from.

Read part one, part two and part three.

Claire Navale from the Grove Nursery School in Southwark, London writes:

The Grove Nursery School thought hard about the best ways to provide home learning for our children. During lockdown we wanted:

• our home learning to be easily accessible for children, aged 2 to rising 5’s including children with SEND
• to provide ideas for activities that encouraged parents and carers to play with their child, without creating unnecessary burdens or requiring special resources.

The feedback has also informed us that children have been really creative with the resources combining them and using them in ways that they wanted to.

During lockdown we created weekly home learning sheets that covered all the areas of learning in the EYFS in a playful way. Key People emailed the sheets directly to families and encouraged them to try some of the activities and then send photos of what they had enjoyed doing. We had a fantastic response from families and used the Nursery’s Twitter page as a way to share all of the lovely things the children had done and created. Soon families started following our Twitter page liking and commenting on each other’s photos. It was a wonderful way of holding on to our community. 

We also set up our own YouTube channel where we uploaded videos of staff reading stories for the children, tutorials on how to make dough, poems, rhymes and games. Feedback has been similarly positive. 

“We always looked forward to getting the home learning sheets for new ideas. We liked the format and how it was broken down into different areas. Lot of the ideas were things we could do as a family, including Meghan, Helen’s little sister. Helen loved the craft activities. She used old boxes to turn herself into a robot and we made a letter box out of an old cardboard box. We wrote letters to our family and posted them there first” (Hannah, Helen’s mum). 

One comment that brought home just how important relationships and community are, and where early years settings feature in this, came from Izan’s family:

“We appreciate that the Nursery is caring for our son even when he is at home. We feel remembered”

Jen Lexmond and the team at EasyPeasy write:

160 families (out of approximately 200 families on roll) have been using the EasyPeasy app over the last year at Sheringham Nursery School. 90 of those families continued using it during lockdown.

Staff members at Sheringham continued to comment on the game ideas during lockdown, adding ideas and motivation). This is associated with parents viewing those videos more. We also saw some ​‘shy’ parents who hadn’t previously come on board have a go during the lockdown period.

Nationwide, there was a significant surge in sign-ups for EasyPeasy during the first lockdown. This included:

• sign-ups for priority families, funded by the DFE and by Local Authorities (blue)
• sign-ups by individual practitioners, on behalf of their setting, school or Children’s Centre (red)
• direct parent sign-ups (yellow)

The data from EasyPeasy suggest that the app needs support from key people and outreach staff. As blended support for home learning, we found it effective. However, as a standalone intervention, our experience is that the parents we would most like to take part, are the parents most likely to drop-out.

We continue to think EasyPeasy is a promising intervention. You can read an evaluation of EasyPeasy by the Sutton Trust (with Newham families) and an evaluation by the EEF.

Evie Keough from Boromi writes:

Boromi is a scheme to lend parents play materials, based on the traditional Toy Library. However, during the pandemic parents couldn’t borrow and return packs, so we replaced Boromi (borrow-me) with Keepmi.

137 families registered from Sheringham Nursery School to receive four Keepmi boxes each over the summer term and summer holidays.

Keepmi asks parents to send a postcard when they are ready for the next box. However, many parents in the community served by Sheringham have low levels of literacy, or are literate in languages other than English. So that this did not become a barrier, we agreed to send the boxes out at regular intervals rather than wait for the postcard.

All the same, some parents did send back postcards with feedback, for example:

33 parents gave feedback over the phone about their use of Keepmi. All of them agreed strongly with the following statements:

1. The Keepmi boxes gave me new ideas of how I can support my child’s learning at home
2. I have – or am likely to – repeat an activity again with my child that I learned from a Keepmi box
3. Because of Keepmi, I have been able to better support my child’s learning at home during the pandemic

Here are some of the additional comments which parents made:

‘It was such a relief. I was really worried about my kids during lockdown, but the Keepmi boxes kept them engaged and entertained throughout the lockdown period

​’During the lockdown everything was almost shut and trying to find resources could have been really hard. The Keepmi boxes had every resource we needed to play the activity.

​‘During lockdown the boxes kept my daughter busy and engaged. I wasn’t worried about her because she was spending a productive time in her house.‘

The comments suggest that the boxes played a positive role in reducing parental worry. When parents worry less, they may be more able to offer the type of warm, loving and responsive parenting which young children need.

We learnt that in the community served by Sheringham, we needed the support of the children’s key people for the Keepmi boxes to work well. Some of the first boxes were opened by children on their own, and then the pieces were soon lost and the activities weren’t enjoyed by the parent and child together. So key people sent video messages in advance of the boxes being sent out, so parents would be prepared and would know what was in the box. Subsequent videos showed key people enjoying the play activities with children attending the nursery, to give parents at home a model.

In the final part of this series, you can read a very brief summary of our learning. What were our top ten learning points?