https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/ A magazine about how children learn. Language, play, attention, memory, reading, number and school, written for readers who enjoy thinking. en-GB Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:31:51 +0000 Northbank Media 2026 Northbank Media editorial@littlemindsmagazine.com (Northbank Media) https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/what-school-readiness-means https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/what-school-readiness-means Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A phrase that sounds like a property of children and is largely a description of what a particular system expects at a particular age. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/the-reception-year-in-england https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/the-reception-year-in-england Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The first year of school in England sits inside the early years framework rather than the national curriculum, which surprises most parents. Here is what tha Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/the-early-years-framework-explained https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/the-early-years-framework-explained Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A statutory framework that governs every nursery, childminder and reception class in England, and which most parents have never read. Here is what is in it. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/libraries-and-what-they-do https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/libraries-and-what-they-do Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The most consequential children's institution in the country is also the least discussed. What the evidence says about access, choice and reading for Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/four-nations-four-systems https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school/four-nations-four-systems Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run genuinely different early years systems. The differences are a useful natural experiment in what is actuall Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/school Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 School readiness as a description of a system, how the reception year in England works, how the four nations differ, what is actually in the early years fram Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/what-play-actually-does https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/what-play-actually-does Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Play is treated as either sacred or trivial and rarely as a mechanism. Here is what it appears to be doing, in the terms a researcher would use. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/what-a-good-childrens-exhibit-does https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/what-a-good-childrens-exhibit-does Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Museums and galleries have spent decades working out how children engage with objects. The best of it is a lesson in attention, and the worst is a button tha Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/unstructured-play-is-not-idleness https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/unstructured-play-is-not-idleness Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The unsupervised, unplanned, apparently pointless hour has been squeezed out of childhood by a set of assumptions that do not survive examination. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/how-curiosity-is-measured https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/how-curiosity-is-measured Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Curiosity is invoked constantly in education and is remarkably hard to record. Here is how researchers actually operationalise it, and what each method misse Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/boredom-and-what-it-is-for https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play/boredom-and-what-it-is-for Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The state adults are most anxious to eliminate from childhood may be the signal that starts self directed activity. Here is what is known and what is guesswo Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/play Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Play as exploration made cheap by the removal of consequence. Unstructured time, boredom, how curiosity is measured in research at all, and what a good child Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/why-repetition-works https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/why-repetition-works Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Repetition is the least glamorous thing in learning and among the best evidenced. It is also something children demand, which is worth taking seriously. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/what-the-phonics-debate-is-about https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/what-the-phonics-debate-is-about Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A long, bitter argument that is only partly about phonics. Separating the empirical question from the political one makes both easier to understand. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/praise-and-feedback https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/praise-and-feedback Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 They are used interchangeably and they do different things. One evaluates a person, the other supplies information, and only one of them is much use for lear Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/number-sense-before-arithmetic https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/number-sense-before-arithmetic Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Long before counting, children track quantity in two distinct ways. Understanding both explains why counting is harder than it looks and why arithmetic sits Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/motor-skill-and-everything-else https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/motor-skill-and-everything-else Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Moving well is treated as separate from thinking well. The developmental evidence suggests they are far more entangled than the timetable implies. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/how-reading-is-learned https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning/how-reading-is-learned Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Speech develops without instruction. Reading does not, because there has been no time for it to. What the brain does instead is one of the best documented st Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/learning Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 How reading is learned and what the phonics argument is actually about, what children know about quantity before anyone teaches them, motor skill, feedback, Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/why-children-ask-why https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/why-children-ask-why Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The why phase is not a verbal tic or a bid for attention. It is a search for explanations, and children treat the answers they get very differently depending Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/the-range-of-normal https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/the-range-of-normal Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Milestone ages describe large groups of children. Read backwards onto a single child they mislead, and the spread around them is far larger than the chart su Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/how-language-arrives https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/how-language-arrives Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Language does not switch on at the first word. Most of the work happens silently, months earlier, and the first word is the visible end of a long build. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/conversation-not-vocabulary https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/conversation-not-vocabulary Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The word count framing has dominated advice to parents for years. The stronger and more consistent signal in the research is about exchange, not volume. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/bilingual-households https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language/bilingual-households Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The durable findings about growing up with two or more languages, the myths that refuse to die, and the widespread advice that turns out to rest on nothing. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/language Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The long invisible build before the first word, what the milestone ages really describe, what happens in a household with two languages, and why children ask Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/why-the-parenting-press-gets-it-wrong https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/why-the-parenting-press-gets-it-wrong Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Not because journalists are careless. Because a chain of individually reasonable decisions strips uncertainty at every stage, and the incentives point one wa Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/what-one-study-can-tell-you https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/what-one-study-can-tell-you Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A single study is one observation of a noisy world. Understanding what it can and cannot support is the most useful thing a reader of parenting coverage can Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/sample-size-in-plain-words https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/sample-size-in-plain-words Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Everyone knows small studies are less reliable. Fewer people know that they are biased upwards, which is a much more useful thing to understand. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/replication-in-plain-words https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/replication-in-plain-words Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A finding that only exists once is not yet knowledge. The past decade of attempting to reproduce well known results has been uncomfortable and enormously use Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/effect-size-in-plain-words https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/effect-size-in-plain-words Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Whether something happened and how much it mattered are different questions. Most coverage answers the first and reports it as though it answered the second. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/correlation-and-cause https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence/correlation-and-cause Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Everyone can recite that correlation is not causation. Rather fewer can say what else could be producing the pattern, which is the part that does the work. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/evidence Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Sample size, replication, effect size in plain words, the distinction between correlation and cause, and why coverage of research about children goes wrong s Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/working-memory-in-plain-words https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/working-memory-in-plain-words Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The small, brief mental workspace that everything deliberate has to pass through. Understanding its limits explains a surprising amount of ordinary classroom Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/why-nobody-remembers-being-three https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/why-nobody-remembers-being-three Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Childhood amnesia is one of the strangest facts about human memory: years of intense learning leave almost no retrievable episodes. Several explanations comp Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/sleep-and-learning https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/sleep-and-learning Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 What sleep appears to do for memory and learning, treated as a biological process rather than as a set of instructions for the evening. Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/screens-as-an-evidence-question https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/screens-as-an-evidence-question Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The debate about children and screens is conducted almost entirely in moral terms. Treated as an evidence question it looks different, and considerably less Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/attention-in-small-children https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention/attention-in-small-children Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Attention in early childhood is not a weaker version of adult attention. It is organised differently, and judging it against an adult standard misreads what Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/attention Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Attention, working memory, the strange fact that almost nobody remembers being three, sleep described as physiology, and the screen argument treated as a que Little Minds Magazine https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/ https://www.littlemindsmagazine.com/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 A magazine about how children learn. Language, play, attention, memory, reading, number and school, written for readers who enjoy thinking. Little Minds Magazine