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"I always try to do what's right for the children but as a leader i'm battling against what my team have always done, even though I know in my heart it's not best practice. I feel exhausted."

Always come back to the child...that's why we do what we do. It sounds harsh and maybe not very hygge but our main job at work isn't to make great friends with everyone. it's to help our children have the very best outcomes possible. 

At times this can feel like it's causing friction in the team and that the practice isn't cohesive across the setting. The children then pick up on this and it can also send them mixed messages on rules and expectations. 

Here are three things you can try today to bring a more positive way in moving forward together. 

1. Go back to your vision

On the Hygge in the Early Years Accreditation I always start the training by coming together as a team and having a shared discussion about how young children learn in your setting and what that looks like as every day p...

What are affirmations?

Affirmations can help young children feel confident and cultivate a positive self-image and are a powerful way of reducing anxiety levels.  An affirmation like “I can do anything” just might help your tot keep their cool when they're, say, struggling to dress themselves, using kind hands or having a hard time waiting their turn.

Saying affirmations is a way to practice positive thinking. It usually calls for repeating positive declarations about yourself or your experience.

The idea is to start getting yourself in a mindset where you can catch negative thoughts happening and meet them with positive ones. Eventually, you'll start to believe more of the good things you say about yourself and embody them in real-time.

We want to be able to equip children from a young age with the tools they need to lead a calmer life. I believe that teaching self love and positivity is just as important (if not more!) as teaching Math. 

Explaining these to children

Begin by ta...

“You cannot buy the right atmosphere or a sense of togetherness. You cannot hygge if you are in a hurry or stressed out, and the art of creating intimacy cannot be bought by anything but time, interest and engagement in the people around you.”
― Meik Wiking

 We can all feel more hygge when it's the holidays or the weekend and we're having some time away from our busy schedule. But how do we actually achieve that calm hygge feeling in the middle of our busy working week? 

The Danes are very good at making sure they don't just rush through life on auto pilot but actually purposely live their life. After all, life is meant to be lived to the fullest and we don't want to put off the best moments of our life for another time. We must take the approach of doing these things today! 

The Danes like to make every day feel special and wonderful by doing something that lights them up. You won't find them saving their 'best' dinner plates for a special occasion, only seeing their favourite peopl...

I get asked all the time...'Where do you get your resources from?'

Firstly, many of the resources we use in Early Years can be collected, reclaimed or re-used for free. Some of my favourite natural Autumn loose parts are;

• Leaves from different trees and different colours
• Dried leaves and flower petals
• Leaf skeletons
• Twigs of different lengths and thickness
• Acorns
• Pine cones
• Moss
• Bark
• Tree cookies
• Tree stumps
• Pumpkins and squash
• Conkers

I also like to add items like:

• Wooden buttons
• Grapat loose parts
• Cotton reels
• Coloured sheets of felt
• Empty picture frames
• Glass beads
• Numicon

Placemats, mirrors, lightboxes and tinkertrays are all good to include alongside too.

When it comes to buying resources i have always worked in schools and settings with very little money to spend on resourcing. Any money that we did have would be spent on;

1. High quality staffing

2. Block Play resources

3. Books

4. Small world imaginative play

I feel that when we spend ...

“In nature, children learn to take risks, overcome fears, make new friends, regulate emotions, and create imaginary worlds.”
― Angela J. Hanscom 

When it comes to taking learning outside we are all very much aware of the many benefits being in nature can have on a child's learning, wellbeing and development. Yet what happens when we have limited access to nature? Perhaps you're a parent living in the middle of the city, an inner city preschool or a school with only concrete grounds?

In this blog article I want to show you 3 simple ways that you can make learning happen outdoors and build nature into your day. 

My experiences

I have worked in a number of different locations over the years and some of these have been rural schools set in between farm land in North Yorkshire, to city centre locations and those in the middle of dense housing estates. Each setting has brought it's own benefits and challenges. In one particular school I worked in the EYFS area was a concrete zone that had...

When it comes to planning for the first few weeks of the Autumn term with your new children I would focus on prioritising the following:

• Making sure new children feel safe and settled
• Building positive relationships with all children
• Establishing rules and expectations 
• Getting children used to the daily routine 

If you take a re-watch of my video from my Hygge Summer School you can see that I share the ways I would plan and organise the daily routine at the start of the year in Reception or nursery. 

When the time feels right for you and your children you can then start to spark new curiosities and interests by introducing these to the children. As much as I believe lots of what we teach from should come from the children I also understand that there needs to be a balance of us as educators offering the opportunity to broaden the children's knowledge through the exposure to different and new experiences. These might be linked to seasonal changes, festivals or celebrations.  ...

Documenting the learning that the children are doing is part of the process of being an early years educator. However we don't want to be doing too much that it takes us away from the child and the importance of the learning. 

What exactly is documentation? This is the process of recording down the child's learning and responding to this in a way as an educator that allows us to deepen their level of learning or provide challenge. 

Although we have many visitors of the blog working internationally, we also have a large proportion of visitors working here in the U.K and with the revised EYFS curriculum as of of September 2021. 

Having worked with many educators here in England over the last year, it has come up in many discussions that under the new EYFS 'there is no requirement to document children's learning.'

In this blog post I want to reflect on the value of high quality observations and unpick why there is still a place for these in our every day early years practice. 

The Gr...

"If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.”

Alfie Kohn

Inside the Hygge in the Early Years Accreditation we learn about the Reggio Inspired approach and work on developing our own image of the child and discovering what it is about each individual that makes them capable learners. Taking that time to get to know them and considering what makes each one special and tuning in to how they learn.  Our own experiences as children, parents and educators shape what this can be and it's important to recognise the strengths and capabilities our individual children have. 

I believe that young children are capable of high levels of engagement in their learning. But how can they show this if i'm always the one deciding what we should do around the agenda I have as an adult? I believe that doing this can set them up to fail.

Therefore my understanding of the child must be backed up by the practice and environment ...

Mini Explorers Childcare – Keira Gilbert

I started my childminding journey in January 2020 just before the first lockdown. While I absolutely love working with children, I decided that becoming my own boss meant I had the power to implement changes to my practice I had been wanting to do for years but was always met with criticism. I needed to slow down for myself and for the children, especially during the most challenging obstacle we had ever faced: a worldwide pandemic. I wanted to have the facts and skills to be able to implement this new vision and respond to criticism in an informed and positive way. I compared myself too much to nurseries I had previously worked on and was stuck in a loop of trying to churn out huge activities one after another through the day to appease what I thought parents would be looking for. As well as this I was spending almost all my earnings on the latest toys and trends to keep the children happy.

The vision I had for my setting was one that valu...