In August 2018, Twinkl Parents was launched, a service designed to meet the needs of an increasing number of parents accessing and subscribing to the Twinkl website.
The service provides resources ranging from flash-cards and activity sheets to online educational games and apps.
Jay Wynn, who manages the Parents service at Twinkl, said: “We wanted to create a service to address the universal challenges parents and guardians face raising children. The team’s mantra is “made by teachers, perfect for parents” and we began by focusing on specific curriculum-based teaching resources.”
As with all Twinkl resources, the materials created for parents are made in-house and approved by the current and former teachers that make up the majority of the team at Twinkl. They include resources designed to aid learning done at school and can be used at home and on the go.
The amount of parents using Twinkl has grown increasingly over the past 10 months and the number of subscribers has increased by over 40% since the service was launched.
As a result, the Twinkl Parents team has also grown from 3 team members based in Sheffield to over twenty located nationally, all with specific knowledge and expertise.
“The team has now also started concentrating on building supportive and inclusive parenting communities,” explained Jay.
“These are primarily on social media, on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. In the next few months, Twinkl Parents will be focusing on growing their two Youtube Channels, one Youtube channel which caters for parents and another Children’s Youtube which includes videos like how to create edible Marshmallow Slime and how to make a Lava Lamp!
“Whether it be through forums, Twitter chats, or an advisor on the end of the phone, we want to support parents with more than just their educational queries and also speak to them about Health and Wellbeing, behaviour management and much more.”
The materials available reflect this, with resources such as mindfulness colouring, meal ideas and wellbeing lists, to name just a few. With a full-time illustrator working within the team, there is also a selection of resources with anecdotal cartoons, which depict the highs and lows of parenthood. These show compassion towards the challenges parents face but also provide comic relief, a great example being this representation of ‘Date Night’.
Twinkl Parents is always looking for new opportunities to help parents and communities. The team recently supported Sheffield’s Hospital Charity by donating over 700 Twinkl Original books and creating mindfulness colouring sheets for participants of the Jessop Super Heroes Appeal family walk, which raised money to make improvements to the Jessop Wing maternity hospital.
Twinkl Parents is part of the core package from Twinkl, which is available at £4.49 a month and includes access to over half a million resources and Twinkl Originals digital storybooks. There is also an option to create a free account and a large variety of free resources to download.
