As cities around the world continue to expand, more children are growing up without access to the countryside, or even to parks and gardens. Playtime takes place indoors or in the built environment. What does this mean for childhood, as well as for society as a whole? Our panellists are Helena Craig, Chairwoman of Black2Nature; Dr Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, expert on risky play, well-being, and outdoor education in childhood; Cath Prisk, founder and director of Outdoor People, and Dr Sally Lee, Learning officer at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Join PEDAL and our panel of experts and practitioners to explore the following questions: • What impact does play in green spaces have on children's physical, cognitive, social and emotional development? • Is outdoor play different to other types of play? • Does playing in nature change how children relate to the world around them? • What can parents and practitioners do to encourage outdoor play and an interest in the natural environment?

Our third webinar will take stock of play research and its findings during the current Covid-19 pandemic, and will be chaired by PEDAL's Dr Sara Baker, a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education at Cambridge. She will be joined by Prof Helen Dodd from the University of Reading and Prof Ane Qvortrup from the University of Southern Denmark to discuss their thoughts and research on the state of play within schools and early childhood settings during the pandemic.

Our second webinar focused on the potentials of play in interventions, and also during the pandemic, and was chaired by PEDAL's Professor Paul Ramchandani. He was joined by Amy Jo Dowd, Head of Evidence at the Lego Foundation and PEDAL's PhD student Krishna Kulkarni.

This webinar focused on how play can manifest in challenging settings, and was chaired by PEDAL's Dr Jenny Gibson. She was joined by Dr Krutika Pau from Starlight Children's Foundation, and Dr Fadi El Yamani from Right To Play. Starlight Children’s Foundation is the national children’s charity that exists to preserve childhood throughout serious illness. Dr Krutika Pau, Director of Children’s Services, shared insights into the challenges of play in hospitals and through the pandemic. Right To Play is an international non-profit organization that empowers vulnerable children to overcome the effects of war, poverty, and disease around the world through play. Dr Fadi El Yamani, Global Training & Capacity Building Specialist, discussed how Right To Play is using play in different challenging settings around the globe.

A PEDAL Resource looking at how we can make the COVID sample taking process less scary for children and parents (particularly for young children) by turning it into a game of collecting rocket fuel. The video aims to give parents some ideas on how to try and turn the swab taking into a bit of a game which distracts and engages their children – it won’t work for everyone, but it might for some.

Social learning has been a large focus of early developmental psychology for the past three decades. While it reveals how culture is transmitted to young children, questions about how young children come up with their own ideas and learn for themselves have been largely ignored. This talk, with Dr Elena Hoicka from the University of Bristol, will present research showing that toddlers can be creative and come up with their own ideas. Elena will focus on toddlers' creation of their own novel jokes and pretending, and toddlers' divergent thinking with novel objects.

Join PEDAL in the conversation about the changing nature of childhood…are we really heading from 'free range' to 'hot house'? Is the Children's Commissioner for England correct when she calls for play on prescription and claims that children lead a "battery hen existence" (more info in the report 'Playing Out')? Chaired by one of PEDAL’s lead researchers, Dr Jenny Gibson, the panel of speakers comprise of: Kathryn Lester (University of Sussex – an academic who researches anxiety in children); Nicola Butler (Chair of Play England’s Board of Trustees and Director of Hackney Play Association – managing Homerton Grove Adventure Playground); Tim Gill (a researcher, writer and consultant on childhood). Stephen Mitchell (Chair, Parkour UK & consultant) Come and join us for this lively and topical debate.

http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/pedal Join PEDAL for a public lecture by world-renowned psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, evaluating the evidence for the importance of free play and guided play as a catalyst for learning in social and cognitive development. Kathy will explore why play, particularly guided play, might offer a successful midway position between the warring factions of playful and didactic approaches to early childhood education. Kathy argues that it is possible to have strong curricular goals that are presented to children within a playful pedagogy. Prof Hirsh-Pasek’s work is trying to understand the link between play and learning by researching both free and guided play, and advocating for more time for play in order for children to thrive academically.

Professor Greenfield is a Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics at the University of Miami. His work is positioned at the interface of research, policy and practice at the international, national and local level. His research examines school readiness with at-risk and dual language learners, with a specific focus on early science education. Science has the power to engage early childhood educators and young children in hands-on, minds-on, fun and engaging experiences that increase the quality of teaching as well as provide young children with critical problem-solving skills and improved learning in multiple school readiness areas. In this PEDAL research seminar, Professor Greenfield discusses the role of science in early education in relation to research, as well as current policy and practice. This lecture forms part of the PEDAL Research Seminar series http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/pedal @PEDALCam

As one of the leading international proponents of play as part of education and learning, David Whitebread's fascinating career led up to the creation of the PEDAL research centre with funding from the LEGO Foundation. Here, David gives us an insight into his career as an early year's educator, University lecturer, and continual researcher, with the world premier of his theory of play! With words of thanks from John Goodwin (LEGO Foundation), Geoff Hayward (Faculty of Education), and short talks from past PhD students Kate Noble, Maria Eracleous & Martina Kuvalja. The event finishes off with two videos - the first created by David's daughter, Sarah, and the second by past PhD students Dave Neale & Matt Somerville.

Infants’ behaviour and physiology are innately synchronised with that of their adult caregivers. This creates social connectedness within the adult-infant bond and is strategic for survival. Yet it is not known whether such synchronisation emerges passively, or whether infants can synchronise selectively and intentionally with their adult partners. Here, I will provide the first evidence that at the most basic level of neural activity (where synchronization may be measured without subjective interpretation), infants show selective up-regulation of neural synchronization with their adult partners during periods of direct intentional gaze. Furthermore, mutual eye contact stimulates infants’ own communicative efforts, which in turn maintains high dyadic synchronisation. Thus, the contingent exchange of social signals between infants and adults brings their brains into mutual temporal alignment, creating an optimal joint-networked state for communication and learning.