Hippocampal place cells encode an animal's current position in space during exploration[1]. During subsequent sleep, hippocampal network activity recapitulates patterns observed during recent experience: place cells with overlapping spatial firing fields during locomotion show a greater tendency to co-fire ('reactivation') [2] and temporally ordered and compressed sequences of place cell firing observed during wakefulness are reinstated ('replay') [3-5]. Reactivation and replay are thought to be network mechanisms underlying memory consolidation [6-10].Compressed sequences of place cell firing also occur during exploration: during each cycle of the theta oscillation, the set of active place cells shifts from those signalling positions behind to those signalling positions ahead of an animal's current location [11,12]. These 'theta sequences' have been linked to spatial planning [13].Here we demonstrate that, before weaning (post-natal day 21, P21), offline place cell activity reflects predominantly stationary locations in recently visited environments. By contrast, sequential place cell firing, describing extended trajectories through space during exploration ('theta sequences') and subsequent sleep ('replay'), emerge gradually after weaning in a coordinated fashion, possibly due to a protracted decrease in the threshold for experiencedriven plasticity.