Stay Play Grow: Early Childhood Education During COVID-19

Once reliant on daycare, preschool and kindergarten to assist with the education and care of their children, parents were now abruptly faced with becoming their sole sources of learning and support.

This change came quickly, leaving many without the tools and resources necessary to keep their children happy, healthy and learning while at home.

Early Learning Lab, a non-profit organization dedicated to equipping teachers, parents and caregivers with better ways to help children aged 0-5, and the team at Yeti realized that they could help by creating a curated and comprehensive source of tools and resources for parents and caregivers. The result was the Stay Play Grow app. 



Stay Play Grow puts dozens of valuable resources at the fingertips of families of young children. To help users quickly navigate to the help they need, resources are broken up into 6 categories:

• My Home and Family:
  Resources pertaining to the wellbeing of the entire family, including government benefits, IRS tax relief, local food banks, free internet and much more.
  
  
• Myself:
  Provides tools for supporting  the mental health and wellbeing of caregivers, including resources for reducing anxiety and stress, articles on working from home with children, and exercise/movement resources. 



  
  
• My Infant and Toddler Ages 0-3:
  Includes simple ways to play and learn with young children, links to comprehensive learning and activity resources, online books and storytelling, and helpful guides to the emotions and behaviors of infants and toddlers.
  

• My Child Ages 3-5:
  Includes the same types of  resources as “My Infant and Toddler”, but age appropriate for children 3-5.
  
  
• 


Health and Safety:
  Resources pertaining to COVID-19, including local updates, tools for prevention, and support in talking to young children about the pandemic. 



  
  
• Resources in Spanish:
  Because California is home to many Spanish speaking families with young children, we included many of the above resources in Spanish.

  
  

Stay Play Grow was designed with simplicity in mind. Because we wanted to ensure that the application could be accessed by users across generations - from young children to great-grandparents- we knew we needed to create an easily navigable, cut and dry user experience. Users are able to simply  access the resource they need, and then favorite it for even simpler return use.

It was crucial to get these tools and resources into the hands of those who needed it as quickly as possible and so time was of the essence while developing this application. The Yeti team was able to finish the app in around 2 weeks - less time than it took the App Store to approve it.



While it was important to build this application quickly, longevity was also an important factor in it’s design. To ensure that Stay Play Grow remains a valuable source of information and resources even after this pandemic has passed, we built in a CRM system that allows the Early Learning Lab team to continually add new content to the application.



The Yeti team is excited to share Stay Play Grow with those who have young children in their lives. It’s free and available in both the App Store and the Google Play Store. We hope you’ll find it to be a helpful and valuable tool during this difficult time!