Even though early years settings and schools in England reopen to all in September, the face of education continues to change and adapt. For other early learners across the world, their education continues to be home based or blended with some school days.

No matter where you are teaching and learning though, creativity and connections have been challenged!

International Dot Day, themed around the story The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, falls on September 15th-ish each year. This global celebration of bravery, creativity and connections encourages young children to make their mark on the world.

Telling somebody how you feel might take more than words for some children. Inspired by the traditional early years ‘All About Me’ templates for starting school, I’ve made this Pages journal for children to share their experiences of home with their teacher when they return to school.

There are 4 activities and children use photography, video, drawing and sound to express their emotions when reflecting on their time learning at home.

This is what the journal looks like:

Download the Pages journal here.

Learn how to create your own Raindrop Comic of photography, drawing and audio in this simple book for parents and teachers.

Download RAINDROP for free on Apple Books here.

February is the annual Safer Internet Day in the U.K. and with most school aged children learning at home right now, this day is more important than ever before. Our youngest learners are using all kinds of online learning tools but what do they understand about password safety? MONKEYCOW is the perfect storybook to teach password safety this year. This blog posts contains an exclusive story video to use at home during the month of Safer Internet Day and free resources to send home too.

The National Cyber Security Centre recommends to ‘Think Random’ when setting passwords. Choosing three random words that are memorable, but not personal to you, makes it easy to remember but also difficult to guess your password.

A good way to create a strong and memorable password is to use three random words. Numbers and symbols can still be used if needed, for example 3redhousemonkeys27!

Be creative and use words memorable to you, so that people can’t guess your password. Your social media accounts can give away vital clues about yourself so don’t use words such as your child’s name or favourite sports team which are easy for people to guess.

National Cyber Security Centre, Think Random

But how might you teach password security to children? It sounds like a really dry lesson for any learners let alone young children!

Writing about home learning from an early years perspective doesn’t feel too out of the ordinary as parent partnerships play a key role in early childhood development.

“Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and carers.”

Development Matters, 2012

In Development Matters, the enabling environments principle promises that early years practitioners build relationships with the families of the children they educate. The document goes on to say that formative assessment in the early years is most effective when it includes observations, interactions and information from parents:

“Observe children as they act and interact in their play, everyday activities and planned activities, and learn from parents about what the child does at home“.

Therefore, extending learning to the home from an early years setting should be more like a tweak to what we already have in place for parent partnerships.