Wirral Life October 2017 | Page 80

W BUSINESS L LOCAL PARENT-RUN BUSINESS REACHES 185 MILLION GLOBAL VIEWS AND 200,000 YOU TUBE SUBSCRIBERS Entertainment channel and YouTube sensation Toddler Fun Learning, founded by Wirral parents Amalie and Christian Hughes, is celebrating a busy month as they hit 185 million views and reached 200,000 subscribers of their YouTube channel. They have also launched a new app that allows their content to be watched on the go and have been shortlisted for the Family Entrepreneur of the Year category at the 2017 NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards. Amalie and Christian created the channel when they became frustrated that they couldn’t find the kind of content they were looking for their then toddler. Fast forward four years and they now have three full time staff and a talented team of over 20 local creatives working on all elements of the business from design to music and technology. With a library of videos teaching children everything from numbers, to telling the time and explaining gravity, Toddler Fun Learning aims to create content that both parents and children enjoy. The channel also includes shows such as Gecko’s Real Vehicles which teaches children about important vehicles and the dedicated crew that operate them such as volunteers from the RNLI, or the North West Ambulance service. Christian and Amalie live in West Kirby with their three children. The new Toddler Fun Learning App has been developed following requests from their audience who wanted to access the content on the go. Rated 5* on the Educational App Store, their App helps parents manage screen time - and avoid potential toddler meltdowns - with the clever Parent Timer function. Creating a safe environment for children to watch it allows parents to set a 80 wirrallife.com timer for five minutes up to one hour and when that time is up the Goodbye Song plays, with the characters from the channel singing goodbye and telling the child it’s time to go and play. Amalie Hughes Co-Founder: “We’re so proud to have hit 185 million views of our content worldwide. What started as an idea when our eldest son Josh was 2 has now turned into a business where we can work with a local network of brilliant people. Being parents ourselves definitely helps guide us – we create content that we know our kids will love watching and a lot of the ideas come from what our kids are interested in. We’ve now created the App as we wanted the ability to download videos to watch on the move but also control how much time they spend watching the content. Kids are clever. They know when something hasn’t finished and it causes meltdowns. No-one wants that, we’ve learnt the hard way with that one, so now other parents don’t have to.” All of Toddler Fun Learning’s content is made with an educational element and the App is supported by The Educational App Store with a five-star rating. The Toddler Fun Learning app is free to download and includes samples of the Toddler Fun Learning content and the Parental Timer. For £1.99 per month, subscribers get access to the full library of content as well as including new weekly content, the Adventure Mode which allows them to download videos to watch anytime, anywhere. The Toddler Fun Learning app is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. For more information, please visit Toddler Fun Learning’s videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/Toddlerfunlearning