Blog

Inspiring Awe and Wonder, The Kindred Pedagogy

At Kindred Nurseries, everything we do is centred around the goal of helping your child grow into a curious, confident and resilient individual who possesses a lifelong love of learning.

We believe that every child is unique and full of potential, and it is our job to create worlds of awe and wonder that spark their imagination and nurture their independence.

But what does this really look like in practice? This article breaks down our approach to show how support your child at every step of their Kindred journey.

But What do we Mean by “Pedagogy”?

Quite simply, our pedagogy is the way we teach and care for your child. It’s all about the daily experiences, opportunities, and relationships that we cultivate every day that allow your child to flourish.

Our pedagogy is built upon:

Our Mission: Creating inspiring worlds of awe and wonder for little ones to grow and thrive.
Our Values: Warm, family-focused care, combined with inspirational learning.
Government Guidance: We follow curriculum guidance from the Development Matters framework to support learning at every age.

And at the heart of it all; ensuring that each child is happy, safe, and developing every day.

What’s the difference between a Pedagogy and a Curriculum?

A curriculum is the content you teach, while a pedagogy is the way in which you teach it.

Following the Development Matters Curriculum allows us to implement the requirements of the EYFS Statutory Framework whilst keeping our children and their learning and development at the heart of everything we do.

Our curriculum and pedagogy, therefore, blends as the understanding between what we teach and how and why we teach it in a certain way.

The Four Cornerstones of Development

Resize image project.png

Our pedagogy is informed by the four key principles of child development, as outlined in the Development Matters framework. These are:

A Unique Child: Every child is constantly learning and possesses the ability to be confident, capable, and independent.
Positive Relationships: Deep connections are vital in helping children become strong and independent individuals.
Enabling Environments: Children learn best through environments that spark their curiosity and respond to their individual needs and interests.
Learning and Development. Providing a variety of unique and challenging experiences is key to supporting the unique development and learning of each child.

Nurturing the Unique Child

We ensure that our teaching and environments meet the unique way that your child learns, plays, and explores.

Fostering independence and choice

We lay the foundation for independence by giving your child control over their own environment. This includes:

Providing self-selection toys and resources.
Offering self-service food and drink.
Allowing our children to be the leaders of their own learning, following their individual interests and likes.

Confidence through calculated risk

We help your children learn to assess the world around them safely, by:

Utilising everyday opportunities, such as navigating stairs, to teach children about risk.
Creatively setting up our rooms to include opportunities for risk exploration, assessment and taking – even for our babies.

Building resilience and emotional strength

Through everyday challenges, we actively encourage resilience and emotional strength in your child by:

Encouraging outdoor play and learning, in ALL weather. Our mantra for the outdoors is “There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.”
Creating activities that focus on feelings and emotions to help support our children in developing the skills necessary for self-regulation.
Encouraging children to solve problems and overcome difficulties independently, rather than intervening too quickly.

You are the primary educator

We believe you are your child’s first and primary educator, which is why our pedagogy relies on strong parental partnerships. We maintain this relationship by:

Utilising our parent portal app, Kindred Satchel to directly communicate with our parents.
Actively listen to our parents through regular surveys and ensure we listen to and follow up on feedback.
Informing our parents of every milestone and providing regular opportunities for family events and parental chats.

Building Positive Relationships

We ensure we cultivate positive relationships from the very beginning of your child’s journey at Kindred helping them to become strong and independent individuals.

The importance of your child’s Key Person

Your child’s key person is central to helping establish this trust. Their priority is to build a strong and secure bond with your child.

They ensure your child feels safe and secure, from their very first settling in session.
They act as a daily point of contact, ensuring consistency between home and nursery life.

Resize image project (1).png

Fostering emotional confidence

Our practitioners focus on developing emotional intelligence and confidence in your child by:

Supporting our children to develop a strong sense of self and educating them to celebrate the uniqueness of themselves and every other person.
Praising determination and the process, nurturing confidence in every action.
Recognising and building on each child’s cultural capital, ensuring everyone has equality of opportunity.

Enabling Environments

We ensure our children learn and develop well by crafting environments and opportunities that spark curiosity, promote independence and feel safe.

Home-from-home

Our rooms are designed to feel like an extension of home, using soft furnishings, rugs, neutral tones and other common household items to create a sense of familiarity and security.

An invitation to play

Our rooms are always set up to invite active and child-led learning by:

Storing resources clearly so children can independently access toys of interest to them.
Regularly rotating toys and resources to keep the environment fresh and challenging and help spark new interests and curiosities.
Providing dedicated spaces that meet all needs, such as calm areas for quiet and rest or large open spaces for movement and noise.

Guided Learning and Development

We believe in active learning and are inspired by the Curiosity Approach. Our practitioners are skilled in creating powerful learning moments using the environment around them.

Our approach

We ensure your child is given daily opportunities to lead their own learning and development by:

Using authentic resources and Loose Parts to encourage problem-solving and collaboration through hands-on discovery.
Listening to our children and planning activities in the moment that follow their interests, whilst also ensuring we meet curriculum standards.
Planning open-ended activities that focus on the process of exploration and discovery, rather than aiming for a specific pre-determined result.
Differentiating activities to ensure every child is appropriately challenged.

Quick Takeaways

Our Goal: Create curious, confident and resilient children who are inspired to learn for life.

The Authority: Our pedagogy is guided by the official Development Matters curriculum and its Four Principles.

Independence: We promote skills like decision making, calculated risk-taking, and resilience.

Partnerships: We ensure our parents are involved through the Kindred Satchel App, regular surveys and an open-door policy.

Relationships: We build strong relationships that help support every child’s emotional growth.

Teaching Style: Practitioners practice Intentional Teaching and use the Curiosity Approach with Authentic Resources/Loose Parts to drive active learning and problem-solving.

Enabling Environments: Our rooms are intentionally designed to be homely and inspiring, with free flow access outdoors.

Our promise: A Healthy Foundation for Life

Choosing a nursery means choosing a partner in your child’s development. At Kindred, we deliver trust through our pedagogy; a foundation built on expertise, enabling, environments, and positive relationships.

This commitment means every child is empowered to be curious, confident, and resilient. We take pride in building a home away from home where every child is celebrated for their uniqueness.

Ready to see the Kindred Difference?

If our intentional approach to building lifelong learners sounds right for your family, we invite you to take the next step:

Book a tour and experience our enabling environments in action.

We look forward to partnering with you on your child’s nursery journey.