A project that boosted learning outcomes for babies also helped nursery staff make great strides in their practice, as explained by Donna Luck, Claire Stevenson and Veronica Lawrence, who devised the project.

But babies don't do anything, do they?' can be a familiar lament and commonly held view among inexperienced practitioners. In fact, babies are competent learners from before birth. Recent brain studies have established that a rich and complex set of connections are made in the early minutes, hours, days and weeks of a baby's life. Babies have even been described as 'the most powerful learning machine in the universe' (Gopnick, Meltzoff and Kuhl, 2001)

To raise the quality of babies' experiences within local settings, a multidisciplinary team in Northamptonshire has created an ongoing, sustainable and inspiring project that empowers practitioners in baby rooms to be confident and passionate about their work. As hoped, the project has helped practitioners:

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