Over the first few weeks of using this new website we will add FAQs here starting with the basics of using the site. Please check back here regularly, because we will keep adding FAQs as they arise.
When you have purchased a course you will see this appear in the “my courses” in both your parent or child “my account” area. You will see a link for the date of each lesson, click on this On this page you will see clearly displayed the Zoom details for accessing the live lesson. By the end of the first week you will also see the recording codes listed underneath the lesson codes but if you need a recording at first and it is not there, please email us and request us to send it to you. You will notice that at the top of this page you can choose between “Lesson” and “Materials”.
If you click on “Materials” (or “Resources and Teacher Notes” it will show you any printouts for the lesson and any notes from the teacher. We do our very best to make sure that all resources are available to be printed on Sunday evening ready for the week ahead.
Our website is as safe as any website and we take our responsibility to keep the website secure very seriously.
As we learnt as a community in September when our old site was compromised, there is no such thing as 100% risk free. We are now on a totally new website that has no links to the old site whatsoever but having had it happen to us we ask for you to join us in being extremely vigilant and safety conscious online (on LLP and all websites). We ask that you work with us to be as safe as possible by:
Using a password that you do not use elsewhere and changing your password from time to time.
Use good up to date anti-virus on all your devices.
Log out of the website between uses
Do not click on anything that looks different to our usual site and make sure your children know not to click on things that aren’t usual for our site
Know what you are buying at the checkout (which courses and how many places on each course) as well as the total amount. If you keep all your courses in one subscription it is a lot easier for you to manage your online banking
Regularly check your transactions so that you are in control of your bank account.
This advice is good advice which we recommend you follow when using any website and making any online purchases.
If your automatic payment doesn’t go through, first check that the account that is linked to the card on your account has funds. You can add another payment card in your account under Payment Methods if you need to. Once your funds are topped up, go to Subscription and scroll down and click on pay. This will take you to the checkout page where you can pay the outstanding order which will give you immediate access to your classes again (under My Courses). If when you click pay it takes you to an empty cart page, you need to refresh the page or hit the back button and click pay again and it will load your checkout page.
We currently do not have a way for you to contact the class teacher or for students to contact each other directly but we will do within the first week or so. Please refer back to this question for an update. In the meantime, if you need to send work to the teacher, you can send it to our email address hello@learnlaughplay.co.uk and we will make sure it gets to the teacher.
To buy a new course, click on “Classes” on the top of the website and use the list on the left to filter the classes and browse classes that your child might benefit from. Find out more about a class by clicking on the image or the title of the class. Add the class to your basket by clicking on the “Sign up now” button. When you have added all your classes to your basket click on “Cart” at the top of the website. PLEASE CHECK YOU HAVE THE CORRECT CLASSES /CORRECT AGE/CORRECT DAY/THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF EACH COURSE BEFORE YOU PROCEED TO CHECKOUT. As soon as you pay for a course, you are removing a place on that course from the website for a whole 7 days which means that another family cannot access it. This is why we do not offer refunds and why it is very important that you sign up for the right courses and check before paying.
Please check that the weekly reoccurring total is what you are expecting it to be before clicking “Proceed to checkout”.
At the checkout, you will need to fill out your email address, postal address and payment details. You will also need to read our terms and conditions and privacy policy before you place your order (both are available at the checkout and on the footer of the website). By purchasing you are agreeing to these terms so please make sure that you read them first. You will then click “Sign up now” and your payment will be taken. You will have immediate access to the course from your “My account area” and you will continue to have access until you cancel your subscription or payment fails at which point the website will automatically remove you from the course and make the place available for another family.
Please try to buy courses all at the same time as much as possible as the payment provider (Stripe) takes a large chunk out of each weekly subscription so it helps us to keep costs down if as many people as possible have multiple subscriptions rather than lots of single class subscriptions, so that the payment is shared between classes. If you want us to change your subscription, please send us an email.
To keep things simple we are currently only offering weekly payment options. We will look into other payment options over the next few weeks.
We prefer children to have their camera on if possible because it makes the learning environment much more fun and interactive but it is not compulsory. We do have a “Visual register” at the beginning of each lesson where the teacher asks all children to turn their camera on for a minute or so while they visually check who everyone is for safeguarding purposes. If your child cannot turn their camera on or if their camera is temporarily not working, they will need to have a password to share with the teacher as an alternative to the camera being on for the register. Please get in contact with us as soon as you can to get a password set up. If your child has been coming for a while with their camera on, then we will confirm a password with you via email if you email us from your account holder email. If your child is new, then send us an email and ask us to set up a brief Zoom meeting with you. We will need to see your child and set up a password, which we will then share with the teachers of your child’s class. Your child will need to type this password in the Zoom chat as a private message to the teacher (or if your child cannot then you can type it). We will show you how to do this during the initial Zoom meeting. If at a later date you sign up for more classes, you will need to drop up a quick email to let us know, so that we can let the teacher of the new class know their password.
If you need the teachers to know something about your child, please send us an email at hello@learnlaughplay.co.uk letting us know the information and the classes that your child is signed up for (class name/day/time) and we will make sure that this information is shared with those teachers. If at a later date, you sign up for more classes, you will need to drop us a quick email to let us know, so that we pass this to the teacher. This information will be confidential and only shared with our teachers.
If you go to “My account” and click on “Subscriptions” on the menu on the left, you will bring up a page with all of your subscriptions. You can click on “View” on the right of a subscription to view that specific subscription. From here, you can either cancel the whole subscription by clicking on the CANCEL button OR if there is more than one class in the subscription, you can scroll down and cancel an individual class from your subscription by clicking on the X on the left of the class name. Please double check you are removing the correct class because once it is removed, it will become available for other people to purchase, so if you cancel the wrong one, you could lose your place on that class.
Our term dates are:
Autumn: 9th September to 20th December 2024
Spring: 6th January to 11th April 2025
Summer: 28th April to 25th July 2025
Please note we do not break for half terms.
As per our terms and conditions, we do not issue refunds. This is because once you have paid for the class you take up a place in that class membership for 7 days. Therefore it is really important that you check your cart and check again at the checkout and make sure that you are committed to taking up those places for 7 days. You can cancel any course subscription at any time in your account area which will prevent subsequent payments from being taken. Please check the total amount that you are agreeing to pay at the checkout as well as class names, days and times and how many places on a course you are signing up for as we cannot refund if you place an incorrect order or change your mind.
If you want to add a new course to your subscription, please contact us via the website or email us on hello@learnlaughplay.co.uk and if the course has an available place, we will update your subscription for you and reply letting you know. Your access to the class will start after the next payment is taken. You can also check your subscriptions in your account area to see when your next payment is due to be taken.
If you want access to the class before your next payment date, please send us an email asking us to check the availability of the class (we will need the full name of the class and the day, time and age guide for the class). We will confirm whether there is a place on your chosen course and if there is, we will ask you to pay for the first week via BACs. As soon as we receive your BACs payment we will add the course to your subscription. Please be aware that at busy times we need at least 2 hours to ensure that we can do this before an upcoming live class.
It is important to remember that although our lessons will allow your child to progress with their learning all the way to GCSEs if that is what they want to do, that you are still a home educating parent and you still need to be the person that manages what your child is learning.
To get the best out of our lessons we recommend that you make sure that your account is up to date and you have printed any resources and have got what you need ready in advance of the lesson itself. If you are struggling with IT issues or printing or running around grabbing resources, this can be stressful for your child when they might already be feeling worried about going into an online lesson.
If you can print and prepare resources in advance and make sure you are logged into the lesson at least 5 minutes before it starts, this gives you time to sort out any tech issues before the start of the lesson. Make sure that the camera and microphone on the device are working and that your child has everything that they need before the start of the lesson. Teachers tend to let children into the lesson 5 minutes before the start, which means they can use the chat function to say hello to each other if they want to. It is really important that your child arrives to each lesson 5 minutes before the start time. Arriving late disrupts the lesson for other children because the teacher has to stop to visually register late comers. If your child is late, make sure they turn their camera on straight away and use their name so the teacher can register them quickly.
Children can often take charge of printing their worksheets and gathering a lot of the resources for their lessons themselves – obviously this depends on the child and the lesson but it is a good practise for them to start to organise their own learning and will help you out if they can!
We do not look after the children during lessons (we do not provide child care). It is important that you are close by and you are aware of how your child is doing and any contributions that they are making to the lessons. You are in charge of their safety and behaviour at all times.
All of our teachers offer optional extra learning activities at the end of each lesson. These are a brilliant opportunity for you to share learning with your child and take the topic off in any direction that your child wants to go!