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50 Things to Do Before You're Five

50 Things to Do Before You’re Five is a free mobile app and website that gives parents and carers 50 fantastic experiences to share with their children to help develop their confidence, language, and vocabulary, and to support them in being ready for the next stage in their education.

The 50 activities are low, or no-cost experiences, that include fun indoor, outdoor, seasonal, home-based, and out-and-about activities, that will get your child off to a flying start with their learning and language development.

Each experience has been suggested by parents, carers, and professionals and developed by early years experts and language specialists, to create a resource for every child under five and the grown-ups in their life.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough parents and carers can download the free app from the Apple App Store, and Google Play.

If you are not able to access the internet regularly or would like to record which of the 50 things you have done on paper, we have a '50 Things child booklet' available to download:

50 Things child booklet6.21MB–pdf
Size: 6.21MBFile format: pdf

​​​For further information, please see the 50 Things to Do website: cambspboro.50thingstodo.org.

Support for Practitioners

50 Things to Do Before You’re Five can be a great way to support parents with home learning by suggesting different activities they can carry out with their child. To support conversations with parents, there are several webinars which you can access below.

On 5 October 2021, Helen Wootton of Talking Together in Cambridgeshire and Imogen Alexander of Kettle’s Yard Art Gallery took part in the national 50 Things to do Before You’re Five webinar: How to include young children’s voices in your arts and culture strategy (fast forward to 33:33).

Helen spoke briefly about how CambsEYC is funding community groups to run projects which help parents and carers build on their own understanding of child development and the role they can play in supporting this.

Imogen then spoke about the three projects Kettle’s Yard has run as a result of the funding, including this year’s project with its focus on promoting and using the 50 Things app as a tool to encourage families to explore the world around them.

This short webinar, funded by the Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area, explores how to use the 50 Things to Do Before You’re Five app to work with parents to help develop children’s communication and language skills with practical ideas and examples. 

It is important that children with SEND access a wide range of experiences to support their needs and development.

In this webinar, we explore how the 50 Things to do Before You’re Five app can be used to support families of children with SEND to enable them to try new activities and experiences.

This webinar was funded by the Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area.

The percentage of children classed as overweight or obese has increased and is a national public health concern.

Many of the activities on the 50 Things to Do Before You’re Five app encourage families to be out and about and active.

Find out more about how to use the app to support Healthy Living in this webinar, supported by Cambridgeshire Public Health.

In this webinar, funded by the Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area, we look at the importance of supporting the home learning environment, barriers that parents may face, and how to use the 50 Things to Do Before You’re Five app to support home learning, including during holiday periods.

Good motor skills are essential for our children as they support independence as they learn to do up coats and shoes and make marks, as well as healthy living as they take part in gross motor activities.

In this webinar, we look at how we can use activities from the app to support Motor Skills Development.

Strong attachments in early childhood are vital to children’s resilience and self-regulation in later life.

In this webinar, we explore the importance of attachment, how we can support it in our practice and how the 50 Things app can be used to share activities supporting attachment with families. 

This webinar was funded by the Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area. 

In this webinar, we explore how we can support transitions for children attending our settings using activities from the 50 Things to Do Before You’re Five App.

This webinar links to the Transitions Toolkit which can be found here.