Reducing obesity, improving wellbeing, increasing engagement in learning – the benefits of getting children involved in physical activity are wide ranging and well documented. But a recent project in Wales suggests that there are also positive physical and wellbeing outcomes for parents who get involved with their children’s activities.

In this free course, Listening to young children: supporting transition, you will explore ways of listening to children in order to support their experiences of changes or transitions. Such transitions can involve many dimensions, including familiarisation with new cultural practices, the development of new relationships and potentially a shift ...

This free course, Young children, the outdoors and nature, looks at the importance of babies and toddlers having opportunities to engage with rich outdoor environments.

Are you involved in caring for or educating babies and young children either as a practitioner in the workforce or as a parent/carer? In this free course, Supporting physical development in early childhood, you will learn how to ensure young children do enough physical activity and how it improves child mental and physical health development....

Children can communicate well using toys to express themselves. Use this activity with your child so that they can open up about how they are feeling. 

Will an object float or sink? Use this easy activity to explore your child's understanding of the physical world.

In this free course, Understanding children: babies being heard, you will find out some of the things that very young babies can do. You will also discover how babies can contribute to family life and relationships from birth. You will look at what they need from other adults and children, and what they can learn.

This free course, Play, learning and the brain, examines the area of brain-based learning, with a particular focus on the development of the young child's brain, and is of particular relevance to those who work with young children. We begin by looking at the structure and functions of the brain, and the impact that sensory deprivation can have ...

This free course, Attachment in the early years, covers theory and research in the area of attachment in early childhood. In the 1950s, John Bowlby was the first person to develop a theory about the significance of early attachments between caregivers and very young children. His work has stimulated a massive and very productive field of ...

This free course, The family at the centre of early learning, focuses on the positive learning relationships that can exist in any family and how ordinary, everyday domestic activities can sustain learning. You will consider how the traditions and cultural practices of the community to which the family belongs filters through to the child’s ...

In this free course, Children's perspectives on play, you are asked to put yourself in the place of young children and to think about their view of play and their reasons for playing. When children have personal freedom to choose and make decisions about what and who they want to play with, as well as where they want to play, they are highly ...

This free course will increase your knowledge and skills and show you ways that adults, both parents and professionals, can play an active role in supporting and promoting good health in babies and young children.

This free course, Early years team work and leadership, explores aspects of teamwork and leadership for early years practitioners.

Cultural, social and spatial factors that mediate outdoor interactions for babies and toddlers - presented by Joanne Josephidou and Nicola Kemp.

A presentation from the OU Education Conference, sharing insights from research into early childhood health promotion.

Natalia Kucirkova, Professor of Reading and Children's Development, explores the work of Jerome Bruner, Catherine Snow and Kathy Sylva...

Tackling ecological and social injustice together: how early years practitioners and young children can respond to the climate crisis alongside non-human creatures and the material world around them.

Photography is one way of listening to children’s voices and discovering their multifaceted lives. EdD student Karen Horsley describes her research on the stories and experiences of young children whose families have migrated to the UK made visible through documentary photography.