Two Great New Early Years Resources

It’s not unusual to receive emails announcing the arrival of some amazing new resource, website, professional development course and such like and I’ll give them a cursory glance. However, what is unusual is that last week two emails really stood out and I’ve enjoyed exploring them a little more over the weekend… enough to know that they are well worth recommending to the CAS community via an online discussion – starting with this blog post.

The first is the new CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) website aimed at Early Years (4-7 year olds) and with age appropriate presentation and videos.  Children can collect badges as they play watch videos and there’s advice for grown-ups on how to talk to children about particular online safety issues. I really like the clear layout of the site and my class enjoyed the catchy ‘funny tummy’ song at the end of Episode 1 ‘Watching Videos’. It’s certainly going to be something I promote to our parents for use at home as well as at school.  

It can be accessed here: https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/4_7

The second is the new Early Childhood Hub from the Chartered College of Teaching (CCT). Admittedly you need to be a member of the Chartered College to access it, but the fee is minimal and the benefits outstanding. Not least, the award winning termly journal ‘Impact’ delivers the latest educational research in a nutshell and makes it relevant to the classroom.  And now they have an area on their website dedicated to supporting Early Years practitioners with resources, informative interviews, research summaries and articles that are all about children aged naught to seven.

To quote Professor Dame Alison Peacock in her introduction to the Hub “if we get it right in early years, everything else follows, of course. So I would say early years practitioners are probably the most important people in terms of education. Everything follows on from early years.” And I haven’t been disappointed by the content so far!

It can be accessed here with CCT membership: https://my.chartered.college/early-childhood-hub/

Let me know what you think of these resources or any others that you think would be useful to those of us in Early Years (and Key Stage 1).