When we first opened Young Friends Kindergarten (as Young Friends Nature Nursery) in 2010, it inspired us to focus on nature and the outdoors, and we quickly saw how much the children loved learning through nature, and our nature plot took shape.
Then we started looking at the amount of single-use plastics and other disposables that were being used in nurseries – including ours. What we found got us really worried, and we started thinking about the lack of attention to wider sustainability in nurseries, in terms of both the environment and children’s education.
With the environment in crisis, what messages were nurseries sending to our children, and what were we really teaching them about the world they live in, and their role in looking after it?
We decided then and there that it simply wasn’t good enough, and that we needed to transform our Young Friends Kindergarten into a truly sustainable early years nursery environment.
It’s taken a few years, and lots of experimentation, but today we’ve created a nursery experience for children based around sustainability through our own unique natural curriculum.
High quality interactions and a carefully constructed blend teaching approach influenced by respected theories (both national and international) enable us to follow our conviction that every child has the potential to grow into an adult committed to saving our planet.
We aim to help every child to understand that they have a role to play while they are growing up – and that they can make a difference.
