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Early Years Library

This project is developing a toolkit to support early education and childcare settings to use the Early Years Library (EYL). The EYL describes activities that are commonly found in evidence-based programmes. These can be used by early years practitioners in their everyday practice to support children's cognitive and social-emotional development.

What is the Early Years Library?

The Early Years Library (EYL) is a free online resource for early years practitioners. It was created to help early years practitioners support young children’s development and essential skills for life.

The EYL was designed with early years practitioners. It describes strategies and activities that can be integrated into everyday practice to support key cognitive and social-emotional skills.

The EYL is based on the common elements of successful interventions for early language and literacy, early numeracy and social-emotional skills. Common elements are the strategies and techniques most commonly found across different evidence-based interventions.

The Early Years Library was developed with the Early Intervention Foundation (now Foundations) and can be found on their website, here:

www.eif.org.uk/resource/early-years-library

Our new research

Our new project aims to support the uptake of the EYL in early education and childcare settings. With our partner, The Centre for Evidence and Implementation, we are designing a toolkit to help practitioners use common elements in their everyday practice. The toolkit will be a package of training and support materials.

This project involves working collaboratively with early years practitioners and members of professional organisations, local government, and academia to co-design the toolkit, which will be tested and refined.  This three-year project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It consists of three phases, as described in the diagram below.

Get involved

If you would like to hear about opportunities to become involved with the Early Years Library Project or for more information, please contact Sara Baker or Julia Birchenough via earlyyearslibrary@educ.cam.ac.uk .