Book sharing is an interactive way for parents and children to explore books together. It involves parents following their child’s interest, and labelling and talking about book content that catches their child’s attention.
Book sharing supports the important interactions between babies, young children, and their parents, which are vital for early development. Research has shown that book sharing has lots of benefits for children’s language development, cognitive skills and relationships with their parents or caregivers.
Playtime with Books
The Playtime with Books programme introduces parents to new book sharing skills that they practice with their child. Parents access five online sessions about book sharing in their own time at home. They are also provided with a set of picture books and encouraged to share these with their child. These books have few or no words so the focus is on talking about and responding to book content, instead of simply reading. Programme facilitators check in with parents and provide individualised, positive feedback based on video clips that the parents send of them book sharing with their little ones.
We are developing Playtime with Books with academic partners, local services and families themselves, testing and improving the intervention as we go. Our goal is to create an intervention that works well for families and services, so that it can be scaled up to benefit as many children as possible in the future.
Watch this short animation to find out more about Playtime with Books.
Developing the programme
We used an approach called rapid-cycle design and testing to develop the Playtime with Books programme. This means that we tested the programme with a small number of families, asked them about their experience of receiving it, and then updated the intervention based on their feedback. This approach helped us to create a programme that families enjoy and that fits into their daily lives. We also listened to what local early years practitioners thought and adapted the programme to fit into their workload and service context.
Phase one of development
The first stage of the Playtime with Books programme testing and development was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. We worked in collaboration with the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF), Dartington Service Design Lab, the Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention (CEBEI), Bangor University and Professors Lynne Murray and Peter Cooper. A report on the first stage of the research can be found below, and you can read more on the Nuffield Foundation’s website.
Using rapid-cycle design and testing
We want to create an intervention that can be successfully delivered to a large number of families in the future. Using rapid-cycle design and testing, and updating the intervention to reflect families’ and practitioners’ experiences and needs, will help us make the programme more successful and scalable. Our Learning Partner, Dartington Service Design Lab, supported us in the rapid cycle design and test methodology. A report on this process can be found below and you can read more on their website.
Phase two of development
Building on the Rapid Cycle Design and Testing, we collaborated with NESTA to understand more about how the programme could be scaled up for widespread delivery.
We are now further co-designing and testing the programme with families facing socioeconomic disadvantage in two local authorities. This will test its suitability and readiness for further impact evaluation and delivery at a wider scale. It will also identify any further development required before it will be ready for wider implementation.
