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Speaker 2At Harmony Bank, we believe that better happens together. We're a locally owned bank, built on relationships and personally committed to your success. Our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions. No big bank bureaucracy, just a custom approach to help you thrive. From business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs. Harmony Bank provides a secure, modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality. We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together. Hello and welcome to the How
Speaker 3Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, I am joined by founder of Little Happy Learners, Sophie David. Who, I'm telling you, genuinely, you are in for a monumental treat. The conversation that I have with Sophie is, I'm telling you, it's a monumental treat. The conversation that I had with Sophie has been incredible in so many ways at confirming and consolidating my innate kind of instinct that play is such an important part of children's learning journey, but just how easy it is to introduce small, structured aspects of play that are fun for our children, that build curiosity, and most importantly, reinforce that experience. experiential part of learning don't get don't worry about my jargon didn't mean it to sound jargony but it's just it's such an honest conversation with someone who is so clearly and utterly passionate about what they do doing exactly what they should be doing and sharing such a phenomenal wealth of knowledge that helps us as parents feel a less guilty and gives us some tangible things that we can do and some real expertise around helping us support and you know create that learning journey for our children so there will be lots of links in the show notes so that you can access sophie's book if you would like to do that you can find her online in terms of happy little learners as well as her social platforms so that you can access her free resources there as well as ever if you enjoy listening to the podcast episode then i would be eternally grateful if you could rate follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time here's sophie i mean genuinely i mean sophie and i've been talking a little bit before i've pressed record and i just wish sophie had been around when my children had been younger this is an absolute genuine conversation that speaks to my soul and i'm joined today by sophie david who i would call the play guru i'm not necessarily saying whether that is what you think but we're we're we're going to be talking all things play sophie has her maybe her superpower is in making play important but also in terms of how that then relates to our children's early years and early phonics journey so sophie welcome
Speaker 4thank you so much for having me i think i might put that in my bio play guru and my superpower is making play really fun and engaging i love it i love that
Speaker 3oh very well that's my little gift to you thank you so much so i think that i've got so many things to ask and i think i probably want to start off with initially is that how did you get to be doing what you are doing now what was your journey okay
Speaker 4so my journey i'm going to actually start right at the beginning when i was a a little girl so i absolutely loved primary school i loved primary school i loved how you could get immersed in a topic for over a long period of time and i'm that child and i was that child in primary school where my teacher would tell me something and i would then go and i would want to know everything about it so as a nine-year-old girl my parents still mock me now that i absolutely loved elvis i loved him because my teacher loved him so i then went and i had all of his films i had all his songs and for my 10th birthday i asked for the elvis gold album because i just would become so immersed in what i i just loved learning so and i think what happened is i have taken that through to my adult life and so for me i know that i have this brain where i want to know everything so i've just always wanted children my children and the children i've taught to be the same so we've got little sophie loved primary school and then i've got sophie in teenage years which we won't talk much about but honestly did not enjoy secondary school at all because i just felt like i could never get fully immersed in something and that's because i think i had too much stress in my brain i think i was going from one thing to another there were too many things crammed in my brain at the time and i've always wanted to do well i've always wanted to push myself to do well so i think i found that really difficult and so then that's when i decided i wanted to be a teacher my history teacher in school and i loved history i still love history now and i just remember being in her lesson and i was about 13 and i thought i want to be her i want to be this teacher i want to go and i want to make people want to learn and that's where it started and i knew from then and it's quite young to know what you want to do but i knew from then that's what i wanted to do i did um psychology for a level i went and made sure that i got the grades that i needed went to university and became a teacher i didn't know i wanted to be an earliest teacher i just wanted to be an early age teacher i just wanted to teach in primary school and then my first year they then decided to put me in early years and i was i actually dare i say it was a bit upset i was like i don't want to do early years i want to do a different year but i had my first year in early years and i think that that's when i was reborn into this play fanatic because i absolutely loved sitting in my classroom and looking around and watching little brains bursting little brains happy and they were alive and they were doing what they wanted to do and i my favorite thing and there'll be teachers that will listen to this and go what my favorite thing was planning i loved planning lessons that were going to just excite the children so i used my maiden name was sophie hook and so i added a hook into each of our lessons and so then it then became something we did every lesson we added this hook whether it would be footprints on the floor or a letter from character but every lesson we added this hook to excite the children and just grab their attention and that would entice so much play so it was this idea of planting a seed and watching it grow and so then i became a mum and little happy learners was born because i wanted to do that with my children i found that the um whole sort of ethos around parenting was get them to clubs get them to baby clubs get out of the house as much as possible go and do as much with your children and it just wasn't me i i'm a homebody i love being at home so i needed to bring some light into my life and light into their lives so i started doing activities with them and then this is where we are today it's evolved into this just way of of life i suppose and we share what we do and it's now gone to the like globally people are doing activities that i've been doing for a long time and i've been doing it for a long time and i've been doing it for a long time and it's just become yeah a way of life in our house and my kids won't go a day without asking me what are we going to do today for me what activity have we got so you can you can bet that my freezer right now because the sunshine is filled with ice i've got ice cube trays i've got ice cubes that have got flowers in them i've got ice cubes with dinosaurs in them and they're all in the freezer ready to go for after school oh my god i've
Speaker 3got ice cubes in them i've got ice cubes i love honestly sophie your energy about this is absolutely palpable oh great so it really is this whole buzz thing and that you're clearly doing what you were here to do yeah
Speaker 4i think so i think i was made to be yeah there's lots of
Speaker 3things that i want to ask and um sophie has got a new book that has come out which i have been immersing myself with and i think it's just been out maybe 12 days now it came out on the 5th of june so we'll be sharing the link with that and we will definitely be talking about it in the next couple of weeks so i'm looking forward to it and i'm looking forward to talking about it but i think the one bit that i want to kind of start with is this idea that you touched on and this idea that we have these beautiful bundles of young children when we have our however we come to be a parent and we get these bundles and then we are bombarded with this notion of to help their brain we want to immerse them in multiple experiences let's take them to multiple different activities and in fact certainly your ethos and what comes through really loud and clear from the book is that we don't need obviously we can do that if we want to but actually our children's brains fundamentally want to be able to do that
Speaker 4play absolutely so I found that when I was a new mum so my first when I had my first not many of my friends had children so it was very much about me just trying to find my feet trying to work it out and and I I had a lot of guilt around not going to many classes because I thought oh I wasn't one of those people that I wanted to get out and spend time with everybody I wanted to be at home and really bond with my my son and he found things quite tricky in the first six months he had colic he had a cow's milk protein allergy so we had a lot of time when I actually just wanted to be at home with him and when he was in those happy moments I just wanted to play and so as soon as he was born I I got lots of sensory toys and we would just lay and play and talk and I would just chat away to him and I loved that but I think there is a lot of guilt around you getting out and about and doing all the baby clubs like baby sensory baby ballet and all of these other things and there's a lot of guilt for some parents some parents absolutely love it it's how they want to go out and make friends and and they want to be immersed in this world with lots of babies around them but if you don't want to you can and your child's brain can develop at exactly the same rate or if not more at home with you you are your baby's best teacher they learn I cannot tell you how much they learn just from you from your face in that first six months your face alone a parent's face it it literally teaches them so much so please don't worry if you are one of those parents that do not want to get out of the house your child will learn so much just from you and play is play can be interpreted in so many different ways I get questions all the time like you you're a play advocate but you sit with your child with flashcards but that's because my daughter loves learning flashcards she loves sounds that's what she wants to her idea of play is to sit with some sounds and think of words and use her brain so just because it doesn't look like the play that you've set up for your child with lego or completely independent play in the garden it's her play and we all play differently it's just like adults I genuinely think adults need to set aside time in their day to play more as well as children and that
Speaker 3is the really important part of what you advocate for the play generally is that play looks very different for different people but why do you think that there has been such a decline in play particularly with our children I mean I think we don't play as adults a hundred percent we just we don't have that same level of joy I think probably because we're so riddled with guilt about the things that we should be doing for our children but why are you seeing this decline in play just generally with children the education system
Speaker 4is very it needs to change it all comes back to the education system there's the standards are so high for our children I genuinely feel like it's getting harder for our children to meet these standards that are set upon them and I just find the whole notion of children should be good at maths and English I just find it completely mind-boggling because as adults and I've said it time and time again as adults we are set free and you hear it so many times that if someone going I don't know what I want to do with my life and you say what do you love doing but that is not how our education system set out we do not say to children well what is it that you love doing what are you really confident at okay let's do more of that it's well it doesn't really matter if you're not confident with maths this is what you have to do and we're going to do it like this and you're going to sit here and this is the strategy we're going to use you can't use any other strategy this is it and it blows my mind because it takes away every part of your reality and how you learn and how we access everything and I've spoke about it recently and when when we're in a situation where we are stressed our cortisol levels rise so therefore we actually can't learn so our brain stops that function of being able to remember it the times when we learn is when we've got all this dopamine and this happy energy in our bodies where our brain can retain it and go okay I'm going to lock that in because that's fixed to this memory of movement and happiness and so it really the science behind it I don't know why we have this but play in the school that's that's on the education system we need to make changes there it's not going to happen overnight there are so many people so many amazing people doing so many amazing things for education and I do believe that if we all keep doing these things something will change but in our homes I feel like there's less play now because there is more emphasis on experience there's more emphasis on oh we're going to the zoo or going to the farm or going on a day trip or there's more emphasis on these life experiences and I think that's because we are spending more time with our families I do think that I do believe that that's what I'm seeing we're spending more time families which is amazing but there isn't enough emphasis on this this weekend we're staying at home to reconnect half term I can tell you now as a rule if we have a one week half term we spend the majority of it at home because our family needs to reconnect again my children need to learn to be together again and enjoy each other's company because they lose that when they go into school they spend so much time apart that they lose that ability to to play and cooperate together and and just join forces and by the end of the half term they are ganging up on me like no one's business and they're back to it and it's lovely but it's it's so nice to see that through play they reconnect and they they can even if it's just outside playing football there's so many skills they're learning in that we I just don't think we put enough emphasis on it and I think that's what we need to get back to we need to get back to this we don't need to over complicate things we don't need all these experiences outside of the house being inside the house as a family and just reading a book is enough for our children they just want our time yeah
Speaker 3and I think we've lost a lot of that sort of I don't know trust in the family because we've been we're being bombarded with this whether it's through social media or just the media generally that in order to be a good parent and to give my child all of the opportunities for success I need to curate their life experiences for them rather than having that confidence that actually the skills around cooperation and curiosity can all be nurtured and cultivated as you say just in terms of you know kicking a ball and it seems it is it because we think it's just too simple it must be more complicated than that we over complicate
Speaker 4everything I think that's just human nature isn't it we over complicate everything and I think we I'm so I do this all the time and everything I do I second guess myself and I think there's so much out there now that we think all of these life experiences are building our child and they're going to grow up with all of these traumas and so you just want to do what's best for your child and this is all amazing this is what we want I always say to people if you're asking the question it means you are a good parent because you're questionnaire you're you're thinking about it so I just think we overthink everything every step of the way we're thinking should we be doing more should I be doing less but in actual fact that honestly is just that statement there all our children want is our time and you can be doing whatever you want in that time I think it comes down to as well I spoke to a parent recently and she was talking about her eight-year-old son who doesn't enjoy reading and she said how can I get him to read and I said well how often do you read a book and she said oh I don't I don't read I don't get time I said oh well what's he he's eight so he can read he can read to himself now she said yeah yeah he can read he's confident with reading I said so when he's reading couldn't couldn't you read and she went well no because then I'm not paying attention to get him to enjoy reading he needs to see you enjoy reading and he needs to understand that this is something that everyone can do that when they're bored you can just pick up a book so it's not you ignoring him it's you sitting down together and having quality time both reading your books you will go on holiday with a partner and happily pick up a book and ignore him for hours or her for hours but we feel like we're then ignoring our child if we're reading next to them when actually we are cultivating this enjoyment of learning in them so next time you want your eight-year-old or your nine-year-old to pick up a book get a book use it with them read with them and have some time and then at the end of the day you're going to be able to read with them and then at the end come together what was your book about can you tell me something about it what happened in your book tell them about your book even if it is a little bit like scary or just tell them explain what's happening leave out some bits that you don't want to tell them but explain it it gets this dialogue going and and you're building your relationship further what I found is my sons love football I couldn't I've always not liked football I've disliked it but I now know so much about football because they're reading football books and so I'll say to them oh tell me about that or give me some facts and information and then they'll say can you find out this fact for me so even though we've sat and read separate books at the end we come together and talk about it and then I give them the time that they want and it all of these things we need to take away this guilt of doing things for ourselves they need to see us enjoying things too to realize they can enjoy all these things that they want on their own they don't need an adult to enjoy them with them we can all have these individual choices and and enjoyments and that's how we play I my play and the way that I enjoy myself is by immersing myself in a book and sitting down and and relaxing or dancing in the kitchen that's how I will let off steam and have that playtime lo and behold my children will say they don't like dancing but as soon as I've got the music on they're in the kitchen with me dancing so what is what is that saying isn't it is it monkey see monkey do yeah exactly so I think if we take the stance of that and take the guilt away we have so much parental guilt now what is that about
Speaker 3it's so true isn't it that I mean that little nugget of I hear that all the time so many parents will say actually I've got a child who switched off from reading that you know it's a battle to get them to read and yet just simply reframing it as a we're not neglecting our child by sitting next to them and reading our own book we're actually more likely to get the result that we want because they see that we're also enjoying it and that that that is also us playing but there is so much guilt I think wrapped up in parenting and I think do you think part of that is you know obviously your experience of primary school was a wonderful experience and you have really ferocious appetite for learning and in lots of ways I don't know whether you're feeling that that your daughter is of a similar ilk hence why she likes the flashcards and she's loving that but actually you're such an advocate of this idea about play because that is about engaging all types of learning not just those who might traditionally tick the typical you know good pupil perspective in a school absolutely
Speaker 4so all three of my children are all very different my my middle and it's it's probably quite typical of a middle child he does not sit still ever he does not like so if I if you were to ask him well what do you like watching on tv as I don't like tv he doesn't like anything that makes him sit down so when he is watching the tv he's rolling around and he's he's doing what he wants so he's very active my eldest he needs his downtime he needs to have that time away they're all three very different characters however what they all have in common is that they all love to learn and they're all they get immersed in things so whatever they're learning in school they want to to know more about it and that's because we have a dialogue with our children all the time they tell me their day inside out and so I get this question all the time so how do you get your child to talk about school because I tell them about my day so that's how it started it always started like that and they come home from school in the beginning and all you get is I had a jacket potato for lunch but it is it evolves over time because what I then do is I just give them a rundown of what I've done in the day now I cannot tell you I get out of school I think it takes us maybe 45 minutes to get through all three of their days because I get so we walked in I sat on the carpet they did the register then they read a story this was the story we read and then I get a rundown of the whole story and then I get a rundown of the whole story and then I get a rundown of the whole story inside out so it's another way where you you'd show them how to do that you've got to model that language and how they give you all that information my children if I don't ask them when they come out of school or within the walk home they will say to me can I tell you about my day because now it's their way of releasing and get it all out so what I always think is when they're telling you about their day you can really start to hone in on things that they've done and find out what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's they're doing and run with it which is what we do so this is how we built this love of learning in my son was just learning about the great fire of London so we went up to London and we saw the monument and he wanted to buy a book he he's just absolutely fascinated by he made maps of London it's how you are able to roll with their learning and and you can't do that with every topic obviously and some topics they'll be interested in and some they won't but to break down these barriers like I think what you were trying to say as well is that when we went to school some people might have negative experiences of school and so for them it's something they don't talk about I think we can learn so much from our children now and find out about what they're doing at school and and try to build on that and just change the narrative school doesn't have to be negative it can be a really positive experience but if we want our children to absolutely love to learn and to want to know more we have to want to know more and we have to ask those questions and and really delve in so it's a bit like football I think genuinely if I went to a quiz about football now I might be able to actually answer a few of the questions my husband loves it because he loves football so now I know lots it's the same with Pokemon I knew all the Pokemon's name because that's what they were interested in at a time so yeah I think just getting immersed in it will help them to just really build that love of of any learning
Speaker 3and it's clear from your website and it's clear from your new book that it's that cultivating that curiosity through play as early as we possibly can is it your view that if we're doing that we're much more likely to get that engagement and and love of learning in school
Speaker 4absolutely so I keep saying I keep coming back to questions that I get a lot but it tailors what I'm just about to say so I get the question all the time but if I teach them before school or I teach them their phonics before school won't they be bored in the classroom and my answer to that is always if you teach them to read they will never stop learning so how can they ever be bored so giving them that that initial support with their phonics or and by the way I'm that's not a one-size-fits-all some children are not interested like my middle son he was still very interested in phonics but he was very active so I had to do it in a very different way with him it wasn't sat down we would be jumping on sounds we would be running around doing scavenger hunts with letters and letters and letters and with letters and there's lots of different ways you could do it for all different types of learners and I think that's really important but the earlier you can get this thirst for information and this desire to learn the better because then it does it really the first five years of a child's life are so important because their brain goes through 80 percent of their development their brain is at the capacity 80 capacity at five at three I think it is so then in those ages of four and five they're able to learn and they're able to learn and they're able to learn and they're able to really you're just developing this love and this thirst for knowledge and I have three children all very different and I'd say they all love it because we started so young um and it's just there and out every day I've said this before as well but we really like homework in this house because it's honestly and I think people always go really oh you're those people but we love it because it it's like an opportunity we don't do the homework that's set we do it in a fun way so I think they see it as one-to-one and I think it's really important that we do it in a fun way because it's honestly it's really important that we do it in a fun way so I think people always go one-to-one time with me but they also see us that we're going to do a fun game because if they get sent home homework it's like spellings we don't just write them out we'll play a game with it we might do ping pong we might put them in the bath or they know they're going to get an activity out of it because it's the best way to learn them they're not going to learn them just writing them out so so they know they're getting something fun and it's I always say this is flip the narrative make homework a fun thing rather than a oh you've got to do your homework it's let's do our homework let's get it done let's have a fun game with these spellings and they will start to want to do it at Harmony Bank
Speaker 2we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs Harmony Bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality we're Harmony Bank where better happens together it is such a
Speaker 3big thing that narrative Sophie I want to take you back to this idea about learning phonics because when I sort of first came across you and before I'd got my hands lucky lady you've got my hands on the book I would have thought if someone had said to me about teaching children phonics I would have thought right now I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this and I thought right okay I need to get my four-year-old who might be starting school my daughter was a summer birthday and my son was a sort of a January birthday I need to before they start school I'm going to start buying some flashcards with phonics but actually and I think this is such an important bit that even if you're listening to this podcast episode with older children it just means that it's not what we preconceive any skill to be it's all of the foundational pieces because phonics for you when I've looked through the book is about just basic sounds of the crunching sounds that we make when we go for a walk it's not sit there with flashcards can you talk us through that because that to me seems to be so foundational to your aspect of play being the foundation to learning absolutely so
Speaker 4the book it's called read write play but it's and it is the journey from your preschooler to when they're in year two so they're seven and eight the journey takes us from your two-year-old who is just starting to understand that they're going to be able to understand the world and what I've done is I have I started with phase one because it's often the phase that is completely forgotten like you said most parents will go phonics oh okay that's learning all the sounds isn't it and then they go straight in they go this is a there's a whole phase of phonics before that that gets completely dismissed I'm starting something now with lots of preschools and I've I've produced like a phase basically I've produced lots of plans for preschools for free so that they can implement phase one phonics in their settings, without it feeling really rigid, it's all through play. And the reason why is because there's lots of aspects of phase one, it's all about sound discrimination. So not sounds as in the sounds we make, but the sounds that we hear. So environmental sounds, animal sounds, sounds you will hear in your house, out of your house, all these different sounds, and we're starting to label them. So you wouldn't even know that you're doing it, but you're on a walk with your preschooler and you're saying, what can you hear? I can hear someone trimming their trees right now. I can hear a car coming past. I can hear an aeroplane. What that is, is sound discrimination. And what we're doing is we're getting them to understand that that sound has a label, which is exactly what phonics is. It's giving a scribble on the paper, a sound. So that's the stepping stones. There's also things like alliteration. So understanding that words start with the same sound. Rhyming really helps to understand that. Words have patterns and they follow these rules. That's their first really interpretation of the English language or any language that you're learning has these patterns that we have to decode and try and understand. So all of these things build up and they're stepping stones to being able to start reading and start writing and start understanding sounds. There's another phase of that that's called oral blending. And lots of parents and educators still don't realise that before we start introducing those scribbles on the paper, those letters, what we want to do is we want to get them to hear this blending process. So you want to be able to say, and the child hear it and go, cat. Being able to do that, they're blending that in their head. They're hearing them come together and understanding that sounds come together to make a word. That is, phonics is in its entirety, in a nutshell. So we're doing this in a really simple way through play, through everyday life. And that's what phase one is all about. In my book, I try to set it out. So that you can have these small activities every day that take no time at all. You can just embed them into your everyday life and you can do them like a couple of minutes here and there. And you're starting to build this knowledge and understanding around sound discrimination, understanding all of our environment and the words and how they come together. And if you do all of those things, you will have a child that is so confident when they start reception. So I'm not saying to people, run out and get some flashcards and start teaching your old sounds. I'm saying really understand the world around you. Start really looking at the way you say words and how you produce sounds. With speech and language needs being the highest we've ever had them across the globe, but definitely in the UK. I know the stats there. It's like one in five children are coming into schools now with speech and language needs. With that being so high, it needs to be something that we're addressing in the way that we're producing these sounds. So one of the activities in the book is just, getting a mirror and looking at the way your mouth moves when you produce these sounds and really focusing on them. If we did that every day with our child that has speech and language needs with specific sounds, we will then really help them to develop those sounds before they start school, which would then set them up for success. There's also a bit at the back where it's got a picture of my beautiful little daughter doing all of the sounds and her mouth movements. So it shows you exactly what your mouth should look like with every sound. So for example, with the off sound you want a nice circle in your mouth. And so if you're showing your child that, giving them a mirror, they love looking at themselves, don't they? You want to give them that mirror and get them to just do this and have a look at it and really observe it, then you're just setting them up for just going into school and being able to produce these sounds beautifully and to be able to start that process. So that's that in a bit of a nutshell. But yeah, phase one is super important and I'm super passionate about getting more and more preschools and nurseries trained effectively to be able to do that. So if we do do that, and we start right at the very start of their education, I really do think we can start to iron out some of these speech and language needs by the time they get to school, which will then help them go forwards.
Speaker 3Why do you think Sophie, because it is, I mean, it staggered me when I saw the statistic a few months ago, that is one in five, so 20% of children who are starting school, if you did not know this, are being referred to speech and language therapy. And in fact, I think the numbers are even being picked up as early as two years of age, the statistics in terms of 13% of children not developing as they should do with language. Is that and I'm not, you know, this is an on it, we're trying to be honest in these in the podcast. That's, you know, one of the things that I vow to always be. So it's not about a blame game. But is that as parents, we've been fed the narrative that we need to be experiential, and we've lost sight of the absolute basics? Or is it something
Speaker 4else? It's really hard to know what it is, it really is. And I think we can, I don't think it's one factor. I don't think it's all that, because I don't think that would be all parents doing that. I genuinely think there's lots of factors that have come into it. We can't keep blaming COVID. We really can't. And I don't feel like that's something we can blame anymore, especially with our youngest children, because they're no longer affected by that. So I genuinely believe that there's lots of things that come together. But I do think screen time has a huge, huge, it is a huge reason why I do believe that. I think that we have, we're just talking less to our children, we have less time. There's so many pressures on parents now to do everything. There's so many pressures on mothers to do everything, and work and be a parent and do all of those things. So this is not a negative on anyone. And it's not to add any more guilt or pressure. But I do think we talk less to our children. I think we have less time with our children than ever before. And I think we have less time with our children than ever before. We have to look at screen time. And we have to say, this is not demonizing screen time at all. I am a parent who advocates for play. I am a parent that allows my children to use screens. My eldest son has a switch. We have a TV. We don't have tablets, but that is not to demonize tablets. That's just our choice. It is not to demonize them. We are in a society where we will be using screens forevermore. However, we do need to look at screen time. And we do need to think about quality screen time. And we do need to think about screen time. And we need to think about quantity of screen time. I say quality because more and more as experienced from being a teacher, more and more children are accessing stuff that they should not. It's not age related. And more and more children are watching things that are so overstimulating that it's then very difficult to come away and be stimulated by blocks because they've just had flashing lights, loud music, everything thrown at them. It's so difficult for our children. And I think it's important to think about quantity of screen time. And I think it's very difficult because the media and anything that you're watching or consuming, they are very good at marketing for education and saying everything is educational. So my stance on that is absolutely within reason, something can be educational. If you want to watch a few episodes of Miss Rachel, for instance, fantastic. I have not got a bad word to say about Miss Rachel. I was on end. That is not educational. You are taking everything that they are learning away because they are just being bombarded with all this information, these songs, these rhymes, these rhythms, they cannot take it in. So if you do want to use screen time and you want to use it effectively, use it and use it the quality of it. So Miss Rachel is definitely quality. I'd say what she's doing is amazing. So supplement that. Use a Miss Rachel episode where I don't watch Miss Rachel but say it's on shapes. Then go and get lots of shapes out and see if they can use what they've just learned in that episode with their shapes. Can they build a shape? Can they make a shape? Can they draw a shape? We need to be adding more play to supplement that screen time. So my stance is if they've had screen time, they need to then go and do something afterwards. We have lots of rules around screen time. It's now become a chat about screen time and I don't want to demonize it, but our rules are that my L.A. eldest son, he's the only one that's interested in using the switch. So he has half an hour twice a week and he has an hour at the weekend. Before he does any screen time, any time on that switch, he needs to have half an hour of reading, something creative, something maths or something writing based. So one of those things. So what we're doing is we're supplementing that screen time with something educational, something physical, something creative for him. And some days he will just say to me, I'm going to go and build some Lego before I do that. Great. That is something that he can do whatever he wants. He might even want to go outside and do like blow some bubbles in the garden. You do whatever you want. Be a child, but you're doing that before the screen. And he knows that that's an expectation. So I think if as long as you've got these things in place in your household, we don't need to say no screen time. But just I do think that has a huge, huge effect on our children's language skills because there's just they're getting too much from the screens that then they can't interpret it into their own language and communication.
Speaker 3I know we've sort of talked about that screen time, but it is such an important part to remember that there's two bits to it. I think part of it is that as parents, we've been we've fallen into a trap of being bombarded with this notion that this particular app or this particular program that we access through a streaming device is educational. And therefore we want to give, of course, as parents, we want to give our children the best possible. So I think that that is part of it. But it's also recognising and I think you speak to this a lot in terms of the words, the language that you use on your website and the language that you use within the book that learning is experiential so it it's not a passive thing so great miss rachel fabulous but until unless our children experience then they haven't really learned is that right
Speaker 4absolutely yeah that is exactly you've summed that up i i managed to say lots of words but you've summed that up beautifully it is exactly that we want our children and our children will get dopamine hits from the screen time they do and that that happens so quickly and it can then cause the cortisol levels to rise because if our brains are just not i mean you'll know more about this but it's the science behind it just doesn't match and when we're playing and we're experiencing something those levels are really even and our children will get those real good happy feelings and that's what we want we want that to then build that pathway in the brain to then getting it to stick in there and we can retain it we can bring it back so that's why often our children learn with a song and so my children will learn they've learned their times tables with different songs at school and then it sticks because it's something that they enjoy doing with their friends they have like a little dance that they do with it or a jig so often a multi-sensory approach to things does it helps our children to retain that information and to build those pathways because it does create more of these pathways from different parts of our brain that all come together so when we experience something when we're moving and we're doing something and we're enjoying so if we're building with lego we're using different parts of our brain that then actually helps us whereas when we are watching something it's only one part of our brain that is ignited at that time so it's very hard for us to retain it all of it
Speaker 3yeah and and it's it's that you know i think um from an education perspective we often talk about the barriers to learning for individual children and then how can we optimize to make sure so if you've got a child who is generally someone who's a bit of a fidget i remember being a massive fidget at school and friends trying to time how long i could sit still for but you know if i'm a if you're a mover that we might see that as a negative in terms of a barrier but it just actually just means that for me to really engage in learning i need to be able to move as well so it's understanding that learning is multi-dimensional it isn't we it isn't one medium and therefore i've learned it
Speaker 4yes and it's not one size fits all everybody like you're saying everybody's different and i think that's why with the book i was able to to put in so many different activities because all three of my children learn so differently and what's lovely is that i will have one that just loves any kind of sensory play anything that's messy and immersive he loves whereas my daughter absolutely the opposite she doesn't like guessing death doesn't like touching anything that would be a stressor for her so the fact that all three of mine are so different and i've experienced so many different children and worked with them and know what works for them and what doesn't that's why i've been able to put like a hundred different activities in there there's so many activities in the book that have a movement side of things like even if it's a reading activity i've tried to make it physical can they run around the house and find things can they throw a ball in a cup and get it it's very important to add these different elements for all the different types of learners
Speaker 3yeah and i mean having looked through i haven't looked at every single activity yet but they are i mean it's packed and what's up what i love and i'm not a technophobe i promise i'm not an anti-tech but i love that every single one of those activities is that it's an engagement with our children using good old-fashioned i mean even there's a you've got to get this book but there's a resource list so that you know exactly what you need to get there's preparation there's planning um so that actually we can fit this in into the smallest amount of time that we might have each day it's not we're not talking about huge amounts of time are we sophie to be able to be doing some of the things so i've i've had i've
Speaker 4got two books so my first book was how to create little happy learners and with that book there were lots of activities and it was written just after the pandemic and i was we had time and we were making lots of things together and my children were younger and i can honestly say i would sit in the evenings every evening tv on with my husband cup of tea and i'd have cardboard all around me and i'd be building and making things for my children to play with and i would sit in the evenings every evening tv on with my husband cup of tea and i'd play with a different time in my life this time when i wrote this book i have two children in school one in nursery i have a full-time job that i have to cry try and cram into the time that she's at nursery i am a working mum and i realized that actually it needs to be super accessible it needs to be a place where people can go okay they want to do something with me right now let's make it educational and let's grab the book we can find something so my sister works full-time and she has five children and i'm like okay i'm going to do this and i'm going to do this and i'm going to so she yeah has her hands full a lot i'm one of five so it's not that weird for us but she she's got her hands full she's drugging it she works full-time so this this says so much for the book she rang me on thursday and said where do i get cream of tartar from for the play-doh because lots of the activities in the book are with play-doh and there's a recipe so you can make your own and i said i've got it i'll bring it to you on the school run she said okay she rang me that night and said they need to get it done and i said okay i've got it i'll bring it to you they'd done 10 activities in the book that night with across the age ranges of her children and that was all with play-doh so her children are so happy because they've had this time with mom they've made their own play-doh they've done learning activities so mom's like yes i've done homework already on a friday night this is great so they have gone into the weekend feeling so good so that is what the whole premise of the book is i want you to one have this knowledge about phonics that you've never had before because let's be honest your children start school they start coming home and saying i've learned split diagraphs today and you go oh wow okay great and so i wanted it to give you all the knowledge and empower you to know what they're talking about and two i just wanted you to be able to pick it up and feel like you can tick a box in your head and take that pressure away from you because there's so many pressures especially around learning and learning and learning and learning and learning and learning and wanting our children to do the best that they can so i think we've made it as accessible as possible there's also qr codes in there where you can actually scan them it takes you to my website and you can print them so you don't even have to write anything you just print the words off
Speaker 3it's great just for honestly genuine it is it is amazing so i was really strongly you've done a brilliant job genuinely in all sorts of ways the way that it's structured the accessibility of it and i could talk to you all day all day sophie but i guess what time has got to come to an end but i guess the one thing that i would ask then in terms of sort of as our sort of finishing question is let's say i'm a busy mom busy busy dad and i'm listening and i'm nodding loads listening to you and i'm probably already found you on instagram and following you and ordering the book and but i'm thinking where do i start currently i'm not doing i know that i want you know i'm not doing i'm not doing you know you've spoken really eloquently about the importance of play and that we need to be talking to our children more if we're feeling overwhelmed because there's a lot of guilt as parents what are the things that you would advocate that we start with just because it's about just starting isn't it rather than feeling overwhelmed that you know and beating ourselves up that we oh my goodness i should have done this and i haven't done it and where would you suggest that we start first
Speaker 4of all park the guilt i would start with because you don't need to feel guilt for not doing enough our children go to school to to get their education i try to supplement their education at home so they go and get these experiences and then i supplement they don't always need that it's just really nice to add as much play as possible into their life so park the guilt but if you're starting and you've got the book flick through the book find out what it is that they like naturally if you've got a child that's in year one they will go oh i'm not very good at that or i and as soon as they say i'm not very good you know that's what they're not very confident with it doesn't mean they can't do it it means they lack confidence in it which that is my whole stance on this none of this is to give your child this boost in education that they're going to be a genius it's so they enjoy it and feel confident with it children will enjoy what they are doing so much more if they feel like they can do it and so what we're doing is we're giving them the can so flick through the book and have a look and see what they won what they feel confident in and what they're not feeling confident in and i'd start with something that they're feeling confident with and say to them you teach me because i know nothing remember your children are going to school and they're learning they want to show you what they're learning they want to show you that they are clever that they are learning these things so even if you feel like your child is struggling find out what they are confident with and let them show you so let them be the teacher can we do this activity but you need to teach me that's where you start because what you're going to do is you're going to teach them how to do it what you'll do is you'll learn so much about your child in that moment you'll learn whether they are listening in class you'll learn what they're taking in and what they're not you will learn just everything you need to know in that five minute window about how they feel about education and if in that step you've got two two stems off this if you've got a child that you can tell is listening to everything and is feeling confident and happy and all that language around learning is really excited you know you've got a child that is really enthusiastic and loves phonics and loves learning already if you have the other stem where they say i can't teach you i don't know and there's this lack of of confidence there you know you've got a little bit of work to do to just make it as much fun as possible that doesn't mean you've got work to do and to do an activity every day it means you just need to try and make it fun my best advice get some letters for your bath and do it in the bath we play a game where we have magnetic letters that we use in the bath as well and they're diagraph letters so that's two letters that make one sound and we put soap all over them and then we just throw the letters at their body and then they have to take them off and read them and they love it so we can do it really fast and it's really fun and it's just a really fun or we do it in the shower and they just throw them all over the shower you can make it as fun as possible there'll be activities in the book that that you can do lots lots more activities from you'll get one idea from the book and it will stem off into a hundred different ways you can do it but that's my advice if you've got someone a child that you see is struggling and saying i can't do it i'm not very good at it it's because they're not confident and it's your job to just make them confident and the only way you can do that is by having fun
Speaker 3with them around it oh i love that and i love that it's almost counterintuitive to what we would do as a parent if stop we would normally start with where's the gap and and let me work on that yeah rather than actually let's get them excited and and and remind them of the confidence they have for certain areas that they already feel good about before so that we we can learn and then we can start looking at the next bit absolutely that
Speaker 4is exactly what it's
Speaker 3about yeah oh sophie i cannot tell you how wonderful it has been to speak to you you i mean i mean my children are older but i am i've come away hugely inspired and i know that all of the listeners that will be listening to this will be feeling the same in the show notes we will have a link to the book we'll have a link to sophie's website and also her instagram which is just packed full of extra resources as well and sophie i'd love to have you on again and i genuinely hope and wish the huge success for the book because it is so well
Speaker 4deserved thank you so much oh thank you thank you you
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