By Clare Stead, the founder of the Oliiki Baby Brain Building System
Section 1 – The learning and development requirements 1.1 This section sets out what providers must do, working in partnership with parents and/or carers, to promote the learning and development of all children in their care, and to ensure their entire early years’ experience contributes positively to their brain development and readiness for Key Stage 1. The learning and development requirements are informed by the best available evidence on how children learn. They also reflect the broad range of skills, knowledge, and attitudes children need as foundations for life now and in the future. Early years providers must guide the development of children’s capabilities to help ensure that children in their care will fully benefit from future opportunities.
Yikes! Brain development is in the first sentence of the EYFS requirements for all providers. And not only that, it also states we need to do it in partnership with parents and across the WHOLE early years and make it informed by the best available evidence!
So how on earth do we do that in the Baby Room? After all, most of the babies can’t yet speak or do much alone!
The Baby Room’s unfair advantage!
Actually, we’re super lucky! If we get the Baby Room right, we’re not only building babies’ brains on a daily basis, but we’re also able to supercharge what we’re doing because it’s literally the time the brain is building itself!
You see the first 1000 days, the time from conception to two is the time that babies’ brains are being built. A baby’s brain roughly doubles in size in the first year alone! And it’s built through the experiences they have and the relationships they build.
Babies need to learn everything. Like all learning, it starts from the simple and builds to the complex. So, what the babies are doing may look super simple to you, but to them, the simplest thing is literally brain building.
'To a baby, simple’s never simple, it’s brain building!' Clare Stead
And when you look deeper, you’ll see that the thing that you thought was simple, is actually super complex.
Take “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.
On the surface it’s just something to fill five minutes as you wait for other babies to be ready, or for lunch to make it to the table.
But look deeper and you’ll see that when you sing it, you’re:
- Building their listening skills. Singing stretches the words out, so babies can more easily tune into them
- Building their understanding of pattern, rhythm, rhyme, repetition and prediction. All of these are the foundations of language. Babies are born “citizens of the world”, able to hear the sounds of every language. Songs like this help them, tune into the specifics of the language they will go on to speak!
As you rock them backwards and forwards as you row your boats, you’re:
- Building the muscles in their neck, shoulders and core, and even those in their hands and arms as they hold on tight and row!
And as you reach the final part of the song, and you get ready to “scream” you’re helping to build their attention, memory, and anticipation skills, and giving them a huge boost of delight when the pattern changes and the scream comes!
That’s not bad for a 5-minute filler is it while you wait for lunch, is it?!
So how does something like this build foundations for life?
Well, in order for a child to enjoy a game like Row, Row, Row Your Boat, they need to have some key foundations in place.
They need to be able to:
- hold their head and shoulders up
- have a strong enough core to sit for the whole song while being rocked backwards and forwards
- grip your hands or fingers or hold on tight
- cope with and enjoy the feeling of moving through space. (That needs their vestibular (balance) system to be developed enough for the rocking movement to feel enjoyable rather than scary)
- have enough of a sense of trust that being tipped backwards feels safe
- focus on your face and connect through eye contact and your voice
- remember the song from previous experiences to enjoy the scream at the end rather than finding it surprising and frightening
- handle the excitement of the scream and come back to calm afterwards with your help
- let you know they want it AGAIN using their communication skills!
Without these foundations in place, what you thought was a fun five-minute filler could be something scary and unpredictable for the child.
So where do all these foundations come from? Many of them are built through repeated opportunities like tummy time, clapping, holding hands, waving, kisses with family members, playing on the swings at the park, being swung around by an enthusiastic uncle, always having someone there to help the baby back to calm when things go wrong.
Almost all of these foundations are built in the minutiae of the day, and at home! And the more of these foundations are in place, the more the child is able to engage with and enjoy the moments you share with them. Which means…
Parent partnerships are possibly more important than you think
The EYFS asks us to do all this “working in partnership with parents and carers” and their role starts while they are on our waiting lists, and doesn’t stop when the child arrives at the Baby Room door.
Parents and carers play a huge part in building babies’ brains, but too often they aren’t aware of the bigness of the tiny things they do every day in their role.
Imagine, if we not only shared the hugeness of what they are achieving with their baby but also used the time from the first look around our settings to help bring them on this baby brain building journey that their child, they and we are embarking on together.
The impact would be greater engagement of parents with nurseries, a deeper understanding of the role play, plays in supporting development and a stronger, more meaningful, deeper parent partnership that strengthened the foundations of everything that going forward.
Brain development is statutory. Having teams, and parents who understand the bigness of the tiny things they do every day brings it to life!