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Leading early years membership organisation the Early Years Alliance has today announced the launch of two new free digital services for parents with young children to help keep families active, engaged and learning during the summer holidays: ‘Family Time Tips’ and ‘Let’s Learning Together @ Home’.

Family Time Tips is a free digital service which provides daily fun, practical tips, advice and activity ideas to promote children’s learning and development directly to parents’ mobiles via WhatsApp.

Daily topics include language and learning through play activities, health and wellbeing tips plus nutritional advice for the whole family, with all resources carefully chosen to positively support children’s development. 

Parents receive one message a day via a WhatsApp broadcast message and can opt-out of the service at any point. There is no advertising and parents’ phone numbers won’t be shared with anyone else signed up to the project.

More information is available at: www.eyalliance.org.uk/familytimetips

Let’s Learn Together @ Home is a free six-week online programme delivered via the Zoom platform, which aims to bring families together through fun learning and play activities, seamlessly extending children’s learning into the home. 

There are two versions of the programme available: one for children aged two and under, and another for children aged three to five.

Each of the six weekly one-hour session is led and delivered by an Alliance professional and aims to support parents and carers to better understand how their child likes to learn and the opportunities for learning at home. 

The sessions include 'Music theme with the kitchen band’, looking at how to encourage home-based musical learning through everyday activities; ‘Creating awe and wonder through science’, exploring how day-to-day activities can help encourage scientific learning the development of problem-solving skills; and ‘No garden gardening’, focusing on how families can use everyday gardening activities to create learning opportunities, including advice and tips for parents and carers without access to an outdoor space. 

More information is available at www.eyalliance.org.uk/lets-learn-together-home.

Commenting on the launch of the ‘Family Time Tips’ service and ‘Let’s Learn Together @ Home’ programme, Alliance director of quality improvement Michael Freeston, said:

“These exciting new programmes build on the success of the family support packages the Alliance has offered throughout lockdown. 

“The Family Time Tips service is an innovative new way to boost learning opportunities at home on a daily basis and offers real support for parents and families in choosing the best resources to support their child’s development. 

"The Let’s Learn Together @ Home programme has proven to be extremely beneficial for families, who have enjoyed supporting their child's learning at home through weekly, interactive courses. We're delighted that with the support of the Department for Education, we are now able to offer this programme to families across England.  

“Through both resources, we hope to help ensure that the summer and beyond is full of fun family activities which help support children's learning by making the most of all the home-based learning opportunities there are.”

Editor notes 

• The Early Years Alliance is the largest and most representative early years membership organisation in England. A registered educational charity, it also provides high-quality affordable childcare and education to support children and families in areas of deprivation throughout the country.

• The Alliance represents 14,000 members and supports them to deliver care and learning to more than 800,000 families every year. We deliver family learning projects, offer information and advice, produce specialist publications, run acclaimed training programmes and campaign to influence early years policy and practice.

• The Alliance website is