Story Time Isn’t Just Reading… It’s Connection, Safety and Healing by Gwyneth Keen
In this blog post, early childhood professional Gwyneth Keen explores how something as familiar as story time can create opportunities for connection, emotional safety and belonging. She reflects on sensitive, responsive interactions, making space for the different ways children listen and participate, and why returning to the same story can bring comfort, understanding and reassurance.
Recruiting Now: Early Years Maths Learning Lead
Advance Your Career and Shape Early Years Maths Are you an experienced Early Years Leader or Setting Manager with a passion for maths? The Bristol & Beyond Early Years Stronger Practice Hub, covering the north of the SW region, is recruiting an Early Years Maths...
A Phonics for Mathematics? by Robin Taylor
In this blog post by Robin Taylor, Associate Head of St Pauls Nursery School and Specialist Leader in Early Mathematics, he explores what really underpins children’s mathematical development. Drawing on research from the Centre for Early Mathematics Learning and the Erikson Early Math Collaborative, Robin unpicks the foundational concepts, spatial reasoning and mathematical language that help children learn to count, and asks what a rich, playful “palette of provision” looks like in practice.
The Right to Belong: Embedding Inclusion into PSED by Simone Barnes
In this blog post, Simone Barnes explores why belonging sits at the heart of personal, social and emotional development. She looks at representation in the early years workforce and in children’s books, and shares team reflection questions to help settings tell every child: you belong here.
Case Study – Level 3 Award in Working with Babies and Young Children Under 2 Years (NCFE)
In this case study, Lauren Wilcox, Baby Room Leader at The Learning Tree Nursery, shares her experience of the Level 3 Award in Working with Babies and Young Children Under 2 Years (NCFE). She reflects on brain development research, the first 1001 days, advocating for non-verbal babies, and a visit to St Paul’s Nursery School that brought the theory to life.
Stronger Practice Hubs Joint Summer CPD Offer 2026
Stronger Practice Hubs from across England have pooled their summer offer into one programme. More than twenty fully-funded online sessions running from late July to the end of August, covering babies, communication and language, maths, SEND, nutrition, leadership and childminding. Open to all early years practitioners and childminders.
Privacy and Safeguarding During Intimate Care by Leila Garau Taylor
Reflective Practice Lead and DSL Leila Garau Taylor explores what the updated EYFS safeguarding requirements around privacy during intimate care mean in practice, reflecting on how we can balance children’s dignity and feelings with safeguarding, and how everyday routines teach children about consent, body autonomy and respectful relationships.
Beyond the Settling-In Period: Building Lasting Parent Partnerships to Support Children by Liz Willcox
Childminder and former primary teacher Liz Willcox explores what genuine partnership with parents looks like beyond the settling-in period, sharing practical insights on building trust, navigating harder conversations, engaging families who may find it difficult to connect, and making communication truly two-way.
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