Your child will take their own unique learning journey, mastering skills in 6 streams of development underpinned by play.
Like a stream, your child will carve out a learning journey that will sometimes meander gently, sometimes race ahead like rapids and sometimes be still for a time before moving on. Although your child’s development may look similar to others, it is totally unique as the journey of no two children, or streams, is ever the same.
We have created 6 streams of development to support you in understanding your child’s learning journey during their first five years.
The streams are:
When a baby is born, development starts in the head with the ability to control movements in the face, moving onto the larger body muscles such as core, legs and arms. It is likely that by the age of two most children will be able to walk and run, however Gross Motor skills will continue to improve throughout childhood.
Fine Motor Skills are the skills that develop following on from the progression of gross motor movements. This is because fine motor skills require the strength and coordination of the gross motor muscles in order to operate smaller muscles in the body, such as hands, fingers and wrists.
As children grow, they notice and recognise sounds in the world around them and begin to associate them in meaningful contexts. By being exposed to speech and language, they too will learn to talk.
Social and Emotional development is the ability to understand different feelings and emotions, recognise them in others and then respond to them in an appropriate way. Which is an awful lot to ask of a child!
From the day your baby is born, they begin to learn about the world around them through their senses and sensory play provides an essential foundation for children’s overall development.
Cognitive development refers to the process in which our brain builds, processes and develops information to allow us to understand the world around us. It helps us to develop skills such as thinking, memory, processing and understanding.
The observation icon is there to help you to keep a track of how many times you have seen your child practise a skill so that you can be sure that it is familiar enough to them for you to mark it as mastered.
Sometimes it can take quite a while for a child to master a particular skill, whereas another could be mastered quickly.
Using this feature never triggers a skill to be marked as mastered. It is just there to act as a record.
The active skills list in the 'Journey' shows the skills most likely to be coming up next at your child's development stage.
Notice we do not use 'ages and stages' because every child is unique. The idea that at a certain age, all children will all of a sudden magically master a skill at the same time, is we're sure you will agree, nonsense.
However, based on where a unique child is in their own journey, we can have a good idea of what will likely come next.
If parents know what's coming, they are likely first to see children;
Once the 'skill' has become second nature, it is time to mark it as 'mastered'. You can see this process being completed on the previous video.
In doing this, that skill will move over to the mastered list (and into the scrapbook should you choose to) and more skills from the 'coming up' list will become active.
Please take your time; don't dash to master skills. Childhood is a special time and a journey not to be rushed.
One of our key aims in our app is for parents to become more confident in their child's learning and less likely to compare as they see their child progress through the skills. Unhealthy peer comparison causes so much anxiety whereas embracing every step of each child's unique journey not only empowers parents but inspires children to flourish.
Yes. Within the app, you will see an arrow pointing upwards. If you click on that arrow, you will be able to share photos, mastered skills, memories etc via your messaging channels ie Whatsapp / E-mail or you can post to your social media channels, directly from the app.
On your child’s page in the app, you will see three tabs at the top, for the stream you have selected, i.e. cognitive.
Each day, the app suggests hints, tips, hacks, activities and play ideas that are timely and relevant to your child.
The ideas are simple, easy and effective in helping your child master key life skills and usually need nothing more than your child and things you will find in your home or your neighbourhood.
To view your child's current activities, click on the 'Activities' tab.
The scrapbook is a place to record your child’s special moments, including experiences they have had and skills they have mastered. A truly special keepsake to treasure for life.
To add a memory to your scrapbook, click the 'memories' tab (cloud icon with a + symbol) as shown in the video below. Memories can be photo's, video, comments and links to a specific skill.
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My First Five Years, Didsbury Business Centre, 137 Barlow Moor Road, Manchester. M20 2PW