spark EYFS Learning Software
As a parent, the needs of your child, or children, come second to none. You ensure that they are warm, well fed, and well looked after – but what about being ‘well educated’ at an early age? During the first three years, a child’s brain develops 700 neural connections per second, and 90% of the child’s adult brain is formed by the child’s 4th birthday. That is a lot of learning potential, which is lost unless effective learning is embraced, and what better way to embrace it than with technology!
What is EYFS learning software?
Our EYFS learning software is a suite of packages designed to enhance the learning potential of children from birth to 8 years old. There are two inclusive packages available which are used by nurseries, pre-schools and childminders (the setting) to deliver the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) curriculum. Alongside this, there are sparkLINK and spark@HOME devised to be used by parents/carers. Together our software provides your child with a complete learning journey and allows the setting’s professionals to continually provide activities and resources centered around your child’s interests, schemas and learning needs. The same software allows the setting to track, assess and monitor progress, and they can easily share updates with you too. Additionally, they are able to encourage you and other people who are involved with your child (this might be another carer or a professional, such as, a Speech and Language Therapist) to take part in the Progress Check (when your child is three) and regular ‘Learning Journey Profile Reports’ that they make. You will receive invites to do this on-line at a time that suits you. These reports have been constructed to also give you ideas in what you can do with your child at home, to help natural progression, as well as, providing updates on recent achievements.
Working together with your child’s ‘education provider’ is proven to help your child’s progress.
With this in mind and appreciating that ‘one size does not fit all’ spark has organised things to suit your personal circumstances. In addition, you can choose to participate at a greater level. Through using sparkLINK or spark@HOME – the choice is yours! Also, you can try sparkLINK and move onto spark@HOME later when you are ready to do so.
sparkLINK provides you with ongoing ideas in what to do with your child at home. These are included in the particulars the provider has too, so there is an opportunity here to exchange ideas on how to extend your child’s experiences to enhance learning and share success. You know your child the best, so, sparkLINK suggests what information you might wish to share, and you can do that on the sparkLINK jotter which in turn, helps the staff tune into your child’s needs even better. sparkLINK is part of the settings software and is accessed through a set of passwords which ensures the information uploaded is kept extra secure.
spark@HOME is separate software which is owned by you and by using the software you not only support your child you will make up a Learning Journal that will keep everything safe to enjoy later. With spark@HOME you will make your own comments on your child’s essential developmental and learning information that may not have been evident in the setting. In return, you will receive observations in real-time from the setting, including photographs and possibly their comments where these are made and shared. These are added to your child’s Learning Journal too. In practical terms, this allows you to build on skills learned in the setting’s nursery education environment and those your child may not be sharing at home. As you too have the opportunity to add skills you know your child has, this too helps the setting to build on to this through your child’s interest in the nursery environment as these are shared with them. You also have communication jotters to exchange your knowledge with the setting and spark@HOME provides you with suggestions to make it easy to do so.
So, how does all this make me a happier parent?
Rather than the setting being a separate world that your child participates in when you are not around, the software brings things together for you both. There will be consistency and as you discuss things with the setting your child will see and sense the collaboration between you and the setting. This joins up the different parts of your child’s life and you will feel more actively involved in your child’s learning and developmental progress, gaining the added satisfaction of the part you played in providing opportunities to consolidate skills and knowledge and new learning activities and experiences to help progress.
