In the second episode of the Early Bloom Podcast, we welcome Clare Stead, the innovative creator and founder of the Oliiki App, bringing over a decade of teaching expertise across three continents.
We explore the profound significance of the initial 1000 days in a child’s development and delve into how Oliiki app aids nursery settings and parents in establishing a solid foundation for the success of children entering their care.
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0:04
Welcome to the Early Bloom podcast.
0:06
Today we have a very special guest and we’re going to be talking about building babies brains.
0:12
Claire Stead is an innovative creator and founder of the Oliiki app.
0:16
She has over 2 decades of teaching experience across 3 continents.
0:21
Her educational journey from classrooms to international initiatives like Mwabu reflect her commitment to advancing quality education globally.
0:30
Clare, thank you so much for being here today.
0:33
Thank you for having me.
0:34
It’s really great to be here.
0:36
I’d really love to kick off this podcast getting to know your professional background and experience working across 3 continents.
0:46
And I think you have a really unique story and testimonial to share.
0:50
And I’d love for others to, you know, understand more like your experience teaching and the impact that you’ve made today.
1:00
Well, thanks for having me.
1:00
It’s really great to be here.
1:02
So yeah, I do have a bit of a random journey.
1:04
I’m trained from 3 to 8, which is an interesting age range because it crosses all of the key stages.
1:08
I’ve taught in the UK, in New Zealand and in Zambia.
1:12
But I’ve also been an education researcher looking at developing children’s learning and trying to find best practise in the UK and developing curricula for governments around the world and learning material for them.
1:29
And then I moved to Zambia.
1:31
I met a man on a plane who wanted to change the way education took place in Africa.
1:35
And clearly I shouldn’t play poker because when he told me what he was going to do, he looked at me.
1:43
And then he said, you wouldn’t do it that way, would you?
1:47
And so I said, no, I wouldn’t.
1:49
He said, well, please come and help me make it happen.
1:52
And so wow.
1:54
So this was like very life changing.
1:56
Now just to to take it back a little bit more.
1:59
What inspired you to go into teaching in the 1st place?
2:05
I’m one of those teachers who’s always wanted to be a teacher since you knew like since you were young.
2:09
But I also think my journey through education was one of the bumpy ones, you know, and failure is rubbish.
2:15
And I think I was really determined that if I could qualify as a teacher, because it was an if I knew that I understood what failure was like.
2:28
And I didn’t want other children to go through that experience.
2:31
I wanted to transform and be a change maker and enable others to be the change makers that that that mean that that children don’t have to fail.
2:42
And when I so, so, so for me, it’s been very much a vocation and a means of preventing others going through the challenge that I went through, which is why on my journey through in the classrooms, it was very much looking to support the less able child, the child who was, you know, some children come in that don’t have the resources or support to get ahead.
3:13
You know, what would you say?
3:15
Well, yeah, I mean, for me, it’s always been the the question has always been what happened when children come into the classroom.
3:24
We have one group of children who arrive and just gobble up everything we we give them.
3:28
And then we have another group of children who do everything in their power to avoid doing any work.
3:35
And, you know, they’re meowing under the table like a Pussycat or they’re doing everything.
3:38
They’ve got amazing skill sets, but just not the skills that we want them to have in our classrooms in order to be able to thrive.
3:46
And, and for me, it’s always been a question of what happened to those children to make that journey so different.
3:54
And that was an adventure that I went on to investigate.
3:58
And when you say these children, what age group are we talking about?
4:01
So at the time that I started, I mean, I all the way through my career, I’ve been interested in supporting those children who are who are struggling to thrive, particularly because do you know what those ones that are thriving do a really load of it on their own.
4:16
They just you feed them, they go.
4:20
But at the time when it really became very noticeable to me was in year 4.
4:24
I was teaching in year 4 and there was AI had 38 children in my class and no support, no teaching assistant.
4:34
And so it’s just me 17 on IEP and some were too were, were too advanced and some were really struggling.
4:43
And for me that was like, what’s the gap?
4:45
Where’s the gap exactly?
4:47
What’s causing this gap?
4:48
I had this enormous range of it’s almost like you have to come up with two different, I don’t know, lessons, right?
4:53
You know, for the for the overachievers and then the underachievers.
4:56
Yeah.
4:56
And I had the middle of the range, but I also had such a wide gap from in their capabilities that, that I, that I started really questioning how has this happened in one year group that you’ve got, you know, a child who’s struggling to remember their name, who’s struggling to remember numbers to three.
5:13
And then you’ve got another child who gets no answers wrong on their maths practise Sats paper.
5:19
You know, how are we doing this?
5:21
That with what’s happened in the journey of these children?
5:24
And then I realised that in the playground, there was a group of parents that stood alone.
5:32
They, they, they were waiting to be called in to be told, could you just come in a minute, Missus, Missus Jones or Missus whatever.
5:39
And they were the ones who were the parents of the children who were struggling.
5:44
They were the ones who children were never invited to a party.
5:48
They were the ones who were the disruptors.
5:54
And I realised that it wasn’t just about the children that weren’t thriving.
5:58
They came with parents who felt judged, alone, lost.
6:04
And that for me, just seemed really unfair and really unjust.
6:07
So I wanted to find the solution to that problem.
6:10
Yeah, it’s them through this, navigating raising a child in the formative years.
6:16
What I didn’t know what where the answer at the time.
6:19
I really thought that the answer laid in how we were teaching and what we were doing.
6:24
I assumed I got it wrong and that if I talk differently I would transform lives.
6:29
And so then obviously I’d been an education researcher.
6:32
I’d looked at best practise across the country.
6:35
I’d advise governments, 5 governments around the world on curriculum development.
6:41
And then I moved to Zambia and I met this man on the plane who wanted to change the way education took place in Africa.
6:47
And that was an amazing privilege because I could literally rebuild the way we were delivering, learning.
6:56
I could take all that best practise experience.
6:59
I could take all my classroom experience and build a curriculum and a delivery system that ensured the best of the best was, was available for these children in their own language, voiced and translated.
7:15
And these children were deep in the rural Bush of Africa.
7:21
We were doing it off grid with solar, yet we were using innovative tech.
7:27
We were using brand new things called well originally netbooks, but we rebuilt it to go on these things called tablets.
7:35
This was very early on and we were using 4G to deliver the the tech.
7:40
So very, very before Britain even had 4G.
7:44
So going back to when we were on this plane and you met this man, that’s where the idea came about the Moabu app.
7:53
No.
7:54
Well, yes, so, so this guy on.
7:56
How did that?
7:57
Yeah.
7:57
So so I was on a plane and the story is that that basically I was on the plane.
8:04
I saw this guy in the, you know, in the the departure lounge and he looked like a complete geek.
8:11
I mean, he had like the beard, he had the moustache he had with the goatee and then he had the sort of sandals and he had tech like tech all over the place.
8:21
And we got on the plane, we were sitting separately and then eventually I got moved to sit next to him.
8:28
And we were British.
8:29
So obviously for 8 hours we sat silently not talking to each other.
8:35
And in the end, curiosity killed the cat and he had this thing.
8:38
And I was like, is this like the last 30 minutes?
8:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:42
We’re going to work together and change the world the next like, couple of years, but OK.
8:47
And then so last hour of the journey, I said to him, what is that?
8:52
And he said, I’m glad you asked.
8:55
It’s an e-book.
8:56
It’s just come out of America.
8:57
So this is 2006.
8:59
So this is very early on.
9:01
And so it’s like, what’s an ebook?
9:03
So we start chatting.
9:04
It turns out that he was the the provider of the biggest provider of Internet service in Zambia, probably by one person.
9:12
But you know, he was the biggest provider of Internet service and he had a vision.
9:17
He was a Brit who was living and working in Zambia and he had a vision that everybody should have access to the Internet and tech.
9:28
And he wanted to change the way education took place in Africa.
9:32
And he had the idea that we would do that through the Internet and he would deliver here, you know, various things via the Internet.
9:42
And I just clearly shouldn’t told him that.
9:46
I didn’t think that that was the way to do it.
9:48
And at the time, I had just received my business cards from my education research job.
9:54
And it said, and my boss had literally just said to me, oh, I know what you do.
9:59
You’re an e-learning specialist because e-learning didn’t even have a name in 2006.
10:05
And so he, he, he, he, I gave him my business card And I said, you know, he said, well, what would you do?
10:13
And I gave him my business card.
10:14
And he said, oh, that’d be really interesting.
10:17
Do you want to come and do it with me?
10:18
And, and it was, we took a good while to work out.
10:22
What was it and, and what it, it it became was was this thing that started out being called I school Zambia and is now called Mwabu Mwabu Zambia.
10:32
And it’s the MW because MW is a, a combination of letters that you find in the Bantu languages and the African languages.
10:41
And anyway, so, so it’s, it became Wabu and basically we put the whole of the primary curriculum onto a tablet, every lesson, every Lesson plan and teacher training for the seven-year, eight years from reception to year 7 so that children would be able to access learning in their own language.
11:06
Now what’s particularly good about that is in Zambia, teachers get posted around the country.
11:14
So I might not speak the same language as the kids that I’m teaching.
11:19
And the kids that I’m teaching might have a different home language to the language they use in school.
11:25
So many different dialects.
11:27
Yeah.
11:27
Language.
11:28
Yeah.
11:29
And So what we were able to do was be able to deliver learning that could translate on the fly and so that the app could, could literally change languages by Press of a button.
11:43
So I might learn in Tonga, you might learn in Bemba.
11:47
And my teacher might be speaking Nianja, but one of the languages Nianja was a town language.
11:52
So it was an oral language.
11:54
And we had to develop the dictionary in order to be able to then translate, to be able to then put this on the the tablets for some of the kids and for some of the kids and for some of the parents, it was the first time they had ever seen their language written down.
12:14
So it was quite an emotional experience for people.
12:17
But for me, what happened was I realised that we could change the way we were delivering learning if we go back to this wanting to change the outcomes for children.
12:34
And we moved it from what what’s called rote learning, where the children are literally repeating what the teacher is saying with no understanding and potentially the teacher hasn’t really understood because the language is not a common language.
12:48
To then going from rote learning to enquiry based active learning where we had children actively engaged in their learning and rotating through activities.
12:59
And we’re talking about 100 children in a classroom with one teacher and absolutely no resources, nothing except these, these 10 tablets for 100 children rotating around doing activities.
13:13
And it was unbelievably exciting to walk into a Mwabu classroom and feel, feel the difference.
13:24
Once we’d done the teacher training and we’d got teachers on board and they knew what they were doing, you could literally feel the prickle of success and children actively engaged in learning that we often hit see in our classrooms.
13:38
You know, you just get that.
13:39
That’s that buzz of, of hive of activity.
13:41
And it’s an incredibly emotional experience when you see it happening.
13:48
But even in the moment of seeing that happening, there was a group of kids under the table meowing like a Pussycat.
13:56
In the same way as I’d seen in Zambia, it’s in New Zealand that I’d seen in the UK.
14:02
That group of children who were not thriving, who were not gobbling up all the learning we were being given.
14:10
And so I was on this quest that had taken me from my Year 4 classroom in Bristol all the way through my journey in education to say, well, why?
14:23
Why are these children who come in when they were toddlers, they were both as captivated by a Caterpillar on a leaf.
14:33
They’re both as as sort of interested in what was happening.
14:36
So what happens in that journey from toddlerhood to Year 4 to make me go from loving learning to doing everything engaged?
14:47
Yeah.
14:47
To avoid learning.
14:49
OK.
14:50
And that really was the adventure I was on, trying to find the answer to that question.
14:56
Wow.
14:58
So when you had this realisation, what, what did you do about it and what were the next steps you took?
15:06
So then I was looking for the answers of why, why do why, why we have this difference in our children.
15:13
And somebody then showed me a graph of the science of the brain development that happens in the 1st 1000 days of life, the time from conception to two.
15:23
And for me that was literally like putting the light bulbs on.
15:26
And I realised that if I wanted to transform the lives of those children who were were not thriving, I was looking in completely the wrong place.
15:36
When I was looking to change the way we were educating in schools, we needed to go back.
15:43
We needed to go back to the beginning and we needed to work with the babies.
15:46
And then there was this blinding realisation that, and remember I’m a teacher, that that meant that babies don’t come alone, they come with parents.
15:56
And so we would actually have to start working with parents and supporting them on their journey through being the first educator of their children.
16:11
And so then I started really investigating the science of the 1st 1000 days of life, that time from conception to two.
16:19
So this is all really interesting, Claire, could you kind of go in more about like the first thousand days of a baby’s life and how impactful that is for their development?
16:31
Absolutely.
16:32
So what I found out in this, this adventure of finding out about that, that how do it help children thrive was that these first thousand days, that time from conception to two is the time when the brain is developing faster than any other time in life.
16:48
And it’s built through the experiences that we give our babies.
16:51
And babies are born experienced, expectant, but also experienced dependent.
16:56
So we need to be providing our babies with experiences that enable them to use their experiences to develop the skill set that they need to be to build the foundation of all the rest of the learning that they’re going to do in life now.
17:13
It’s kind of like Harvard Centre on the developing child who did the original research talk about the the first thousand days as building the foundations of a strong foundations of a house.
17:26
If you have good strong foundations, then you the walls go on and then the roof goes on and all the wiring goes in really nicely.
17:31
But actually I like to speak of it more as a pyramid because when we think of a pyramid, a pyramid has a really wide base.
17:39
And that wide base is the foundations of the next layer of bricks.
17:45
And all of those are working together to support that top bit the finished child as as it were, if ever, if ever there was a finished child.
17:53
And So what we what we think about is the experiences we give our children are building skill sets.
18:02
And those skill sets are the fact that the bricks when we have we need to give our babies these experiences and they build these strong firm foundations that then form the foundation, the next layer of foundations.
18:18
So all the experiences we give our babies before they come to nursery and the experiences we support our parents with before they come to nursery are the foundations that form the foundations of what we’re going to build on when they come into nursery.
18:33
So as early years practitioners, it’s really important that we help our parents have a great foundation and setting for baby development so that we can build on.
18:49
Yeah.
18:49
And that seamless communication.
18:51
So as you were saying in one of your examples, it’s quite, you realise like you need to educate the parents as well.
19:00
So going back to that starts.
19:01
Yeah, definitely in the home.
19:03
And so some parents, you know, there’s no manual to being a parent.
19:06
So navigating, you know, the, you know, you’re, you know how to create a good environment, a healthy environment for your kid could be difficult for some or some parents might find that very challenging.
19:19
So it’s important that you know, early years practitioners, nursery settings like are able to step in and, and aid in that way.
19:27
One of the things to realise as as early as practitioners is we’re very often the first consistent professional who’s been in contact with these families.
19:38
And our first interaction with families is the first look around the nursery or the child minding setting.
19:44
And that’s the beginning of our journey with them and that family and we can start supporting them straight away.
19:51
And when we do that, that that’s really beneficial for us because we’re going to get better children’s better foundations of development having been created that we can build on later.
20:05
Now why do parents need support?
20:07
Well, when we start a new job.
20:10
We would not expect to start a new job and for someone to go, oh, hi, crack on.
20:15
We would take someone around, we’d show them where the coffee was, we’d show them where the Lou was.
20:19
We would introduce them to all the people.
20:21
We’d explain how we do it around here and these are the things we do and This is why we do it.
20:25
That’s what we need to do for parents.
20:26
Nobody is supporting parents in this way.
20:28
So nobody’s helping parents understand the importance of child development.
20:33
The Royal Foundation in the Big 5 Questions in their 2021 published report found that something like 6076% of parents prepared a place for the baby to sleep and bought stuff in before their first born.
20:51
Was the first baby was born.
20:54
But only 11% of parents find out about child development.
20:59
Yet we know from the same study that 70% of parents with babies from 50 to five feel judged.
21:06
And the things they feel judged about are how the child is performing, how they interact with their child, their child’s development, their communication, and of course, how they look.
21:19
So if my thinking was if what we do is support parents from conception, from the first look around our nursery, we are a setting members are going to get a better quality of child in with stronger, firmer foundations of learning that we can then go on to build on so that we get better value added so that they’re more prepared for reception and year one and their journey through education.
21:47
Now the, the, the government have just, the UK government have just launched the new strategy guidelines and they’re finally talking about importance of preparing, of, of teaching and supporting develop brain development from the outset.
22:08
And the what I did was when I found this, this graph of brain development, I decided that we would map onto the graph of development, the brain development, each activity an activity for when, for every day for 1000 days.
22:26
And that each of those activities would be mapped against this brain sensitive.
22:32
So that the optimal development was taking place.
22:36
And what I also did was map those activities against the Development Matters and the statutory guide framework.
22:43
So that what we’ve got is this really rich set of activities that tell parents and practitioners what this activity is teaching the baby.
22:56
So it might be a tiny, tiny activity.
23:00
I would like to go into the Oliki app and more so like what inspired the name behind Oliki and as well how Oliki, Well, the features Oliki has and how it supports parents and nurseries.
23:13
Like what are some of the learning activities on the app?
23:15
What are some of the features?
23:17
So having found out about this science of the first thousand days, I then decided that I would do what I had done in Africa and make an app.
23:24
And that is the Aliki app.
23:28
And that is an app that’s designed to support parents from conception to to with a tiny daily activity showing parents what to do, why they’re doing it, how to do it and the science behind it and how it’s mapped to the foundation stage and the the EYFS and also the Development matters programmes, curriculums, guidances.
23:57
So why a leaky?
23:59
Well, it was because I wanted it to mean what it says on the 10.
24:04
So a leaky means observe closely, which is what we need to do before we jump in with anything.
24:13
It means listen to what your baby is saying, investigate their interests, initiate conversation.
24:22
So there’s three things to do before we start talking Kindle connection and Instil a love of learning because when we do all of those things, then we do ensure that happens.
24:33
And so Eliki is is as an app that’s designed for parents and parents to be.
24:40
So nurseries are using the Eliki app to support their parents on their parenting journey so that they have these really rich experiences because what Eliki is designed to do and, and the research that I carried out with UCL Institute for Education into the app proved that it did, was it proved that it made parents much more confident in their parenting.
25:05
And when we know that when we have confident parenting, we have less post Natal depression, low infant mental health issues, which to you and me is the social and emotional issues.
25:16
And it’s we also have high home learning environments.
25:19
So we get a richer learning experience for the child.
25:22
So nurseries are using a Leakey to be able to support their parents from from the first look around so that their children have this really rich experience of learning and play using only the things from in and around their home.
25:36
So really easy, tiny, simple things to do, but helping parents understand what the learning is that the child’s gaining from it.
25:44
And the reason that’s important is because we want, if parents understand the power of singing Three Blind Mice or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, they do more of it.
25:56
So are nursery staff able to send home kind of activities for parents to do?
26:04
So if I had the app with me right now, what what are some of the features that I’d see and how is it building that connection between nursery settings and parents?
26:14
So how nurseries are using it is they they send the app home to parents.
26:18
So parents get a code for the app, they unlock the app on their phone, one for mum, one for dad or other carers who are looking after the baby.
26:29
So because they need to build their own relationships and then what happens is the nursery are also using it.
26:35
So the practitioners are also using it to support their journey and understanding of child development because it’s because it contains the science and because it contains the why.
26:47
We learn about child development in the process of developing play.
26:51
And the reason that’s really important is that what happens is our children, we understand because we understand what’s happening.
26:59
We do more of it because we do more of it.
27:01
We give our children more opportunity to learn and grow and develop.
27:05
And then nurseries are also using it because it’s mapped to the EYFS and the development matters.
27:12
They can, there’s like a library Bank of learning that they can use in their for their at home and in nursery.
27:20
So the nursery practitioners use it in the nursery, the parents use it in the at home.
27:27
And then it comes with a Bank of newsletters and training for the Baby Room staff so that people are understanding much more about child development and how we can do brain development from the very beginning to be able to support amazing outcomes for our children.
27:44
And one of the things we know is that children’s development at 22 months old predicts their academic outcomes at 26 years old.
27:55
And we know that the first thousand days literally impacts both their physical, mental and emotional development, how much they’re going to earn, who they’re going to marry, literally it impacts every part of their life going forward.
28:10
The more that we become brain builders in these first thousand days, the more we become the change makers that literally transform the lives of the babies who are in our care.
28:26
And that for me is so exciting to make the baby room a place of impact and change.
28:34
For society to change through tiny playful moments, that’s huge.
28:42
What a legacy to give your families that you have supported them in in a really trans transitional period, a time when they’re anxious and unsure.
28:56
You’ve given them certainty, you have been the change makers that make the impact on their babies lives.
29:03
That’s huge.
29:04
So that’s amazing.
29:06
I would say being in the early years sector really is something that feels very purposeful, like you are shaping the generations to come.
29:16
And I think the work that you’ve been doing is very beautiful and amazing.
29:22
And going into that, I’d like to know what are your future plans and goals and how do you envision Olikiab impacting the early years?
29:32
Let’s imagine that every baby who arrived in your setting reached their full potential, whatever that potential was, because we had together given them a journey of playful, tiny, playful adventures right from the beginning, where we had have every parent feeling supported, nurtured, and cherished so that they can share that nurturing journey with their babies.
30:07
That would be unbelievably exciting.
30:09
We would have, we would make the future dancers, physicists, chemists, explorers, adventurers, all on the mats of our baby rooms.
30:23
I mean, how exciting is that?
30:25
Just because we understood the power of the play that we were doing?
30:29
I think that’s really exciting.
30:32
The future for a Leaky the app is the beginning.
30:36
The next thing is a Leaky Thrive.
30:38
A Leaky Thrive is coming soon.
30:39
It’s a a membership space that will be a portal of learning and professional development for both professionals and parents to learn alongside each other.
30:52
I’ve collected together the most amazing group of professionals who specialised in really tiny small sections of child development and we’ll come together once a month for a master class.
31:03
We’ll have play challenges, we will have coffee chats and celebrations, which will be a space where we literally celebrate how fabulous we are.
31:12
Where is the time and place that we can boast about how how well we’ve done and how well our children have done?
31:19
There’s nowhere.
31:20
So that will be in coffee, chat and celebration.
31:23
And there’ll be the chance to focus on unpicking play and looking at that moment of play when it becomes development so that we become real connoisseurs, I suppose, of baby development and play using play for learning.
31:43
Because we have a community of like minded folks who want to support babies and children to thrive through using play and being risk takers in our play.
31:57
Are we prepared to not control every part of it?
32:02
Are we prepared to allow our children to take the lead?
32:05
Are we prepared to support them and scaffold them in their learning journey through tiny playful moments?
32:15
And are we able to build communities of play and build adventurous communities who support our babies learning journey?
32:26
And are we supporting our parents to feel really confident in that parenting journey?
32:33
And that’s what a leaky thrive will be.
32:35
And if imagine if we have now a group of nurseries all working together with a group of parents all working together just to support the youngest babies in our communities.
32:51
Wow, the impact we’ll have is huge.
32:53
We literally will be change makers for society and that’s enormous.
32:57
That’s amazing.
32:57
It sounds like you have quite a lot on your plate and really exciting stuff to come for a leaky.
33:02
So thank you so much for for sharing your journey and, and for the impact that you’re making.
33:08
Thank you so much for having me and giving me the opportunity to share my journey.
33:12
And I would absolutely love it if anybody wants to get in touch and see if it’s if it’s something that you want to do in your nursery.
33:21
Because the more we talk, the more we understand and the more impact we can make together and that I think it’s really exciting.
