The LEGO Group and EasyPeasy team up to support young children's home learning

The LEGO Group has announced a link up with EasyPeasy to focus on innovations that will support home learning for families with small children. At Dunraven Primary School in South London, the UK Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds met families in the Reception class. He was finding out more about the newly announced partnership between the LEGO Group and EasyPeasy, which aims to support opportunities for children aged two to five to learn at home. It coincides with the Department of Educations’s ‘Hungry Little Minds’ campaign. EasyPeasy is a digital early years social enterprise, sharing the LEGO Group’s beliefs in learning through play and in quality play being accessible to all children. Eight new videos mark the launch of the partnership that aims to inspire families to come up with new ways to learn through play at home. The games will be distributed via EasyPeasy’s app, where there are already over 60 learning infused games and activities. The enterprise’s games are designed to help develop early year skills that will benefit young children including social and emotional and cognitive. For the program’s pilot, the organisations are working with 500 families in areas of lower than average social mobility in London, Southampton, Luton, Bedford and Hastings. The LEGO Group will continue to support EasyPeasy in the second stage which aims to see 10,000 more families get access to the LEGO learning materials through Department of Education projects.

To find out how the LEGO Foundation is researching the benefits of learning through play, check out Brick Fanatics Magazine Issue 6, which includes an exclusive interview with the LEGO Professor of Play.

“We are delighted to have entered into a partnership with EasyPeasy, who share our long-standing commitment to help children learn and develop skills through play including critical thinking, creativity, confidence and communication skills,” said Olivia Lankester, Global Head of Social Impact at the LEGO Group. “Play has a magic quality of creating meaningful moments between caregiver and child. With early results showing that games and expert voice videos shared via the partnership are boosting caregiver’s confidence in playing with their young children we are excited to bring this experience to more families and explore how to create further social impact together.” “Our community of parents use EasyPeasy to discover, play, create and share learning games with their children to develop the skills they need to succeed at school and beyond. Our mission is to help all parents give their children the best start in life, regardless of background,” said Jen Lexmond, Founder and CEO of EasyPeasy. “We’re delighted that LEGO shares these goals and wants to support us to reach families. We’re excited that LEGO will also explore ways of supporting our future development so that families can play and learn more with EasyPeasy.” “Play is the language of childhood, it is how children explore and understand their world,” said Dr Paul Ramchandani, Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at Cambridge University. “It is the primary way in which children hear about and interpret life around them. Evidence shows that providing opportunities for all children to play supports their social, language and emotional development and allows them the opportunity to fulfil their potential. Investing in play and the life of children is an investment like no other.” To continue to support the work of Brick Fanatics, please buy your LEGO sets from shop.LEGO.com and Amazon using our affiliate links.