Today Date Triggered Content

What you need

• A simple recipe (try our banana pancakes visual recipe below!)
• Equipment and space to cook
• A safe place for your child to sit or stand while they cook

The steps

• Find a recipe your child can follow with you, and eventually take the lead on! Recipes with pictures or photos are ideal for this - try our banana pancake recipe below.
• Give your child as much ownership of the cooking process as possible, letting them measure or pour ingredients, do the mixing and any other jobs they're able to do safely. 
• Although you’ll always need to be by their side keeping them safe while they cook, as they get to know the recipe they can start to use you as an assistant instead of the other way around! 

Benefits for your child

• By having a recipe they can follow more independently they can also practise important cognitive skills as they make sense of the pictures and recall the order tasks need to be done in.  
• They will enjoy being more independent and able to make food or snacks for you to enjoy. 

Recipe idea:

Talking about your experiences and memories is not only good for your child’s cognitive development – but has also been shown to be good for their mental health and emotional wellbeing into their teenaged years. Here’s how to use shared memories, like seeing fireworks, to help them develop these skills. 

A long-running study^[1] of 115 mothers and their toddlers, which began 14 years ago, found that children who talked about experiences in more detail had greater social and emotional skills than those who didn't.  

As the nights draw in, and your child is more likely to have time to enjoy the dark evenings before bedtime, it can feel like the opportunities for play start to vanish. No more evening trips to the park, or walks before bed, and less time to get energy out in the afternoon as the gloom sets in earlier and earlier.... but there is a lot of magic in the dusk and dark!  

We’ve created a list of items we find really useful to have on hand for these dark evenings – as well as the usual play kit objects we shared earlier in the year, which you can find linked at the end of this article, in case you missed out.  

As the evenings are getting darker earlier and earlier, we find it can get harder to fill that time between food and bed... but the darkness doesn’t have to limit the options for play. In fact, with the right bits and pieces at hand it can offer lots of new ways to play together!  

This week we’ve brought together some of our favourite ways to play with shadows. 

Over the past few weeks there have been a lot of headlines warning that shouting at children causes the same level of harm to their mental health as physical and sexual abuse. Lots of parents have seen these headlines and panicked, asking us for more information.

Before you spend too much time frantically trying to remember when you last raised your voice in frustration, read on to see why the headlines don’t tell the full story of this research study.  

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes over the past few years, and on the 12th October our very first book made its way out into the world! Featuring 60 easy activities that help parents and carers to support their baby’s physical, cognitive and emotional development.

My First Five Years Baby: Everyday activities to support your baby's development is the first in a new series of books we’re publishing with Bloomsbury. It breaks down the science of child development, explaining how different types of play support their developing skills, alongside 60 activities your baby will love. 

As a parent, the words ‘potty-training’ can make you feel hopeful for a world where you aren’t constantly shelling out for nappies (they aren’t cheap!) but can also fill you with dread. How do you actually go from your child using nappies to going to the loo? It can sound like hard work to anyone, let alone a tired parent.  

For a start, you might find your parents’ or family members’ experience of potty-training was different from how your friends approach it.  

Have you ever watched one of those videos on social media of a toddler making their own breakfast and been both horrified by the idea of the mess it would make in your house... and slightly wish your little one could start making their own meals as soon as possible? We know it’s hard to start cooking with your child, so we’ve pulled together our top tips for getting your child involved in the kitchen – and shared an easy-to-follow visual recipe perfect for them! 

Children learn lots when helping to prepare food- and everyone needs food so there are times every day to practise, making cooking a wonderful learning opportunity. 

When you think of mindfulness, what do you imagine? For lots of people it brings up images of meditation, sitting calmly and quietly or listening to a very soothing voice talking about waves.

All of these are ways to practice mindfulness – but in reality, being mindful can also be learnt through play, which is a brilliant way to help your child understand how to be mindful.  

In this week’s podcast, Alistair and Jennie are joined by Jimmy McLoughlin OBE, of Jobs of the Future, to discuss the skills that will support your child in the fast-changing world of work.

This is especially important to think about, because it's so unlikely that we can imagine all the jobs that will be available for our children.

Many jobs available today would have been impossible to prepare for 30 years ago. The pace of technology change, as well as developments in how we live and work, means we need to prepare children for a world of work we can’t possibly plan for yet.