By far the greatest influence on a child’s early development are their caregivers. Parents and carers are the best people to encourage growth and development from a child’s earliest days.
Peep is a parent and child course developed by the charity PEEPLE, who support parents and children to learn together. The course, which is run by Peep-trained Home-Start South Warwickshire staff, aims to:
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Develop sensitive and responsive relationships between parent and child through talking, listening, playing, singing and sharing books and stories together
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Enhance early childhood development through topics and activities around early literacy, early mathematics, communication and language and more
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Encourage development of the home learning environment to enable parent and child to continue learning and building their relationship at home.
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Our Peep courses are tailored to the families attending, so each one will be different. Each session is based around one of the topics from each of the 5 strands of development – Early Mathematics, Early Literacy, Language and Communication, Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Health and Physical Development.
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We then incorporate the children’s interests into these sessions to create engaging and repeatable activities to enhance their learning, both in the sessions and at home. So, we can use a little girl’s love of dinosaurs to introduce early mathematical language - ‘the T-Rex is on top of the volcano’, ‘the stegosaurus has 5 spines’. Or a little boy’s fascination with fairy tales to explore different ways of playing and learning – dressing up as a prince and role playing, playing with small world toys to recreate a favourite story. Through these activities parents and children can learn together and build a sensitive and responsive relationship.
Our small, close-knit groups help to develop, not only the relationship between parent and child, but also build connections with other families through peer support. Many families have felt isolated during the past few years, so our small groups help to build social connections, in a safe, friendly and respectful environment.
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You can find out more about what Peep groups are like by watching this video.
“The Peep course helped fill in gaps in my knowledge of child development and, at the same time, boost my confidence that I am doing the right things to help my children develop.”
- Peep parent
“Interacting with other children of a similar age was amazing for my daughter, as she doesn’t get many opportunities to meet children…this really helped us both.”
- Peep parent
