News

Messy play including using sand, water and paints are staples for children at all our nurseries, providing opportunities they may not have at home. In the nursery environment children learning from each other is as important as learning from our nursery teams.

The opportunity to explore new things safely alongside their peers provides significant benefits to children as they progress through nursery and towards school.

For more information, see our blog providing more information about our nursery settling-in processes. (link to Why the nursery settling-in process is more important than ever for babies born during the Covid-19 pandemic).

Hayley Walker wanted to work in early years education when she was a babysitter in her teens. But, until joining Thrive, she never dreamed she’d have the confidence to rise through the ranks of a national provider to become Regional Support Manager.

Hayley qualified as a level three nursery practitioner in 1997 at Salford City College and got her first taste of early years education when she joined a crèche. It was here that her knack for innovation confirmed her career choice was the right one.

She described: “It was very quiet in the week, so my colleagues and I decided to set up a special weekday playgroup for the children, which went down very well.”

Hayley was given the opportunity to put more of her skills to the test when she joined Thrive’s Holyrood Nursery in Swinton as a Practitioner. It was a new nursery, and she was able to take on several responsibilities that expanded her knowledge.

She said: “I ran the nursery’s first ever holiday club which was a huge responsibility. From there I was able to help manage multiple toddler rooms and learn more about different ages and their needs.”

After ten years as Nursery Manager, Hayley felt on top of the world. However, this didn’t stop apprehension from setting in when the position of Regional Support Manager came up.
She said: “It is a huge jump with very different duties from those I was used to.”

It was looking unlikely that Hayley would take the plunge until her line manager, Andre Fallows, spoke with her in depth about the role and set up one-to-one learning sessions with other supervisors.

Hayley said: “Andre’s whole approach filled me with confidence. Although I love the day-to-day of running a nursery, I realised I wanted to be challenged.”

“You’re very much a role model to other Nursery Managers as Regional Support Manager as you’ve been there and know how to help, which is a great feeling.”

Now coming up to 20 years with Thrive, Hayley thinks back on her progression from Practitioner to Regional Support Manager and what all of her roles have had in common.
She said: “Thrive helps children thrive but they also enable adults to, not least because of how family orientated they are. My daughters have been able to come to work with me from the age of three months, and there aren’t many jobs that would allow that.

“This in addition to continuous training, personalised support and genuine care for what their staff are thinking and feeling.”

For others looking to advance their career in early years education, Hayley offers some advice:

“You don’t need me to tell you that it can be a rewarding yet challenging career, which is why it’s vital to surround yourself with a strong support group like Thrive that can help you reach your full potential.”

Leading UK nursery chain, Thrive Childcare and Education begin 2022 with the launch of a new website which will encompass all 38 of its England and Scotland nurseries as well as their latest acquisition, Poplars Nursery in Lancashire.

The new website, designed by the outstanding Manchester-based web-development agency, Juicy Media, will allow parents and carers an opportunity to see for themselves all of the different nurseries and what they have to offer. It will also provide information regarding the Thrive Childcare and Education ethos, its commitment to children as well as the environment. Putting children first every time is paramount to Thrives philosophy as well as providing childcare settings where children can learn through play, explore the world around them and develop respect for nature and the environment.

The easy-to-use website will allow parents to find the nearest nurseries in their areas as well as showcase the awards that Thrive has won, testimonials from parents who have their children attend the nurseries and the caring and educational ethos, with its emphasis on outdoor learning, sustainability and respect for nature, which makes the Thrive Childcare and Education experience so unique. It will also allow parents access to the ParentZone App which will make it easy for them to pay fees as well as keeping them up to speed with discounts that they may be entitled to.

We hope you enjoy the new website, its layout and design, and we look forward to an exciting and productive 2022.

One of the top children’s nurseries in the North West of England has become part of the high-quality Thrive Childcare and Education Group, which is growing its presence in the region.

Poplars Nursery in Leyland, Lancashire, which is ranked in the North West’s Top 20 nurseries by daynurseries.co.uk, becomes Thrive’s 12th nursery in the North West, with a further 26 in Scotland.

Founded more than 35 years ago, Poplars Nursery was extended and fully refurbished over the past five years to provide modern nursery and pre-school services for 68 children from just months old to five years.

Thrive CEO Cary Rankin said: “Poplars is a very successful, well-equipped and well-run nursery, providing a high-quality indoor and outdoor environment which gives children the space to play and learn.

“We share the vision and ethos of former owners Vanda and Geoff Hope in putting children and families first and recognising the importance of the dedicated nursery team.

“We want Poplars to remain first, trusted choice for parents and employees in the Leyland area. Like all our nurseries, it is part of the local community and we are committed to maintaining its local identity. We will work with and continue to develop the excellent and trusted team.”

Nursery Manager Hayley Hinton, who has worked at Poplars for 13 years, said: “Poplars is well known and loved by families in the Leyland area, thanks to its dedicated and, in many cases, long-serving team, who will continue to maintain the ethos and values that are shared by Thrive Childcare and Education.

“We are all looking forward to working under the Thrive umbrella and are excited about the similarities in our vision and the unison that this will create. I am particularly looking forward to being a part of the Thrive nursery ‘family’ and the wealth of experience that they will bring as they support us in maintaining the reputation that we are so proud of in the community.

“I would also like to take this opportunity to pass on heartfelt thanks to Vanda and Geoff for their dedication and investment in the nursery during their time here. Poplars is a nursery I am proud to be at the forefront of, with a fantastic team behind me. The scale of development that Poplars has undergone in recent years is so very much appreciated and we all thank them for enabling this.”

Established 20 years ago in Scotland, Thrive has acquired a number of high-quality nursery groups including Happitots, Holyrood, Corner House, Bright Beginnings and Enchanted Forest, as well as successful independent nurseries.

The term Self-Regulation is now commonly used in both Scottish and English early years frameworks. But what does it mean?

Self-Regulation refers to the ability to choose how we respond to certain situations and is an important skill for human beings to develop, and with all development, this starts in the early years.

What Self-Regulation Refers to

Self-regulation is a method for understanding and managing your emotions and helping us to recognise overwhelming emotions such as anger, fear, frustration and stress and having strategies to overcome them and bounce back.

Broadly speaking 10 attributes of self-regulation are:

• Awareness of your own feelings and behaviours
• Self-soothing/bouncing back from upset
• Being able to curb impulsive behaviours
• Being able to concentrate on a task
• Being able to ignore distractions
• Behaving in ways that are pro-social (like getting along with others)
• Planning
• Thinking before acting
• Delaying gratification
• Persisting in the face of difficulty

Self-Regulation is not Self-Control

Self-Regulation is very different to self-control. Self-control is inhibiting impulses. When we teach children to inhibit their impulses they may stop through fear, but they will still have those feelings internally that will manifest later somewhere down the line; this may be days, weeks or even years.

Self-Regulation refers to how we manage stress and helps us transition to a healthier way to deal with this and understand it.

These skills are vital to us leading fulfilling and successful lives.

The Brain and the First Five Years

To begin to understand Self- Regulation, we must first understand how the brain works.

The period between birth and five years old is a sensitive period for children’s developing brains. In other words; the experiences children have during this time have a huge and significant impact on their developing brain. It’s a crucial time for acquiring attachments, physical skills and communication and language skills.

During this time children begin to become more aware of their emotions and develop the strategies to deal with these feelings as appropriate, but we must not expect this to happen overnight. The reason children go through what we might refer to as ‘Terrible Twos’ or ‘Toddler Tantrums’ is perfectly natural as they are experiencing more and more that challenges their emotions but have not yet developed the parts of their brain that help to regulate them (‘Self-Regulation’) effectively.

To put this into perspective, 90% of brain growth takes place by the age of 5, while the last 10% spans over the next 20 years.

The brain consists of the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain but in effect you can split it into three sections:

Reptilian Brain (The Brain Stem)

This is the part of the brain that keeps you alive your bodily functions such as breathing, digestion and keeps your heart beating without you even noticing!

The Limbic brain (The Emotional Brain)

This is the next part still in the bottom half region. There is the Hippocampus, this deals with memory and the Amygdala, this is referred to as the ‘panic button’. The amygdala is so important when urgent decisions induced by stress need to be made. The limbic region is where your attachments are made.

The Cortical Regions

This part of the brain helps you to rationalise, plan and control your body. It deals with empathy and helps you to be aware of others.

It is the last part of the brain to grow and the very front part, the prefrontal cortex, doesn’t fully develop until you are 26 years old.

The brain is built upwards so you can see how children will be functioning on a daily basis from that limbic region as that will be developed when the more rational brain isn’t yet. Children’s actions will be driven by feelings, attachments, wants and needs.

The downstairs brain develops first which is why children respond emotionally and instinctually rather than with rational thought as their upstairs brain is not yet fully developed. To expect them to do this is to expect the impossible!

What We Can do to Support Children’s Self-Regulation Skills

In Thrive Childcare and Education, we have been working with Dr Mine Conkbayir, an award winning author and trainer, over the last few years to develop our understanding of Self-regulation and how we can be good Co-Regulators (adults supporting children’s Self-Regulation skills) in order that we can enable children’s Self-Regulation skills to develop.

What We Have Been Doing in Nursery

We have been working hard reflecting on our environments and activities to ensure that these promote calm and make children feel safe and secure. We know that naturally because of their age and stage, young children may be easily triggered, entering into a state of stress. We have one job when children are experiencing a heightened state of emotion and that is to help children regulate their feelings and bring them back down to a state of calm:

Some of the strategies we now commonly use are:

Name it to Tame it

Acknowledging children’s feelings are real and naming them for them has a powerful effect and can diffuse instances that might otherwise escalate. We know that children’s ‘tantrums’ or challenging responses are as a result of them feeling unsure or frustrated and so saying things like “I see you are feeling sad about that, I understand” “I know it feels frustrating that we need to go inside for lunch now” helps children begin to recognise those feelings in the future. This empathetic strategy reassures children that they are safe and understood thus laying the foundation for them to better cope with these frustrations when they occur in future.

Spaces of Calm

Making sure that in all of our rooms there is a cosy space that children can go and curl up and be calm if they are feeling overwhelmed. This might include books, sensory toys, ear muffs, a blanket and anything else that adults think might help individual children to return to a state of calm.

Breathing Techniques

Teaching children about the importance of deep breathing as a means to regulate both body and the brain after physical exercise or when they begin to feel stressed. Given them resources such as our breathing stars is a good tool to use.

Maximizing opportunities for outdoor play and physical activity throughout the day

We have for many years now been committed to ensuring children are moving for a minimum of 3 hours per day in line with government requirements by reflecting on how we can make many of our educational activities more physical and reducing the amount of time children are expected to sit down.

Reduce Frustration by Planning Ahead and Pre-Empting What Might be Stressful Situations for Children

We reflect on what might be difficult or challenging moments for young children dependant on their age and stage and not expect them to be able to do things that emotionally they are not ready for.

Things to consider:

• Making children wait, sit and listen for long periods of time is not realistic for them as they are still developing the parts of the brain that help them understand why this might be necessary. Planning our own time as adults to be better organised and reducing unnecessary waiting times throughout the routines of the day will ensure we don’t set children up to fail
• Ensuring that toys and resources available allow children to lead their own learning by experimenting, exploring and testing their skills. These resources are referred to as ‘open-ended’ resources
• Sometimes children simply feel stressed because they have a lot of energy and they need to use it, so planning in time for them to be energetic, make big movements and loud noises really helps
• Children are still developing the concept of time so transitions between routine times of the day such as lunch time, change of activity or home time can be times where children feel a little more vulnerable, especially if they aren’t given notice that things are going to change. Us adults need to ensure we aren’t too busy with routine tasks during this time that we don’t notice children’s little cues and triggers that they are becoming overwhelmed

What We Adults at Home and at Nursery Can do to Help When Children are Struggling with their Emotions and Feeling Anxious or Stressed:

• Stay calm
• Acknowledge children’s feelings as real
• Stay with or near the child (if they don’t want anyone to hold them)
• Use calming tones when talking and know when not to talk and just hold space with them
• Offer comfort when the child is ready
• Help direct them to a space of calm where possible as they might be overwhelmed by noise, lights or a busy atmosphere
• Wait until the child has returned to a calm state before talking to the child about what happened in a way that is supportive and nurturing

Making the transition to school can be so overwhelming and a real upheaval for some children (and their families), if they are not physically or emotionally ready to conform to the expectations placed upon them. Yes, they may be able to count to 20, write their name and even recognise a few words, but how does this prepare them for the reality that is entering the schooling system, and all that that brings? So many physical and emotional skills and attributes are needed as a foundation to being truly ready to learn.

I believe vital skills for ‘school readiness’ include:

• Resilience, self-esteem and self-regulation, in order that the emotional challenges and frustrations that arise can be managed in a calm and rational way, so that the child is confident that even when things go wrong, they can work it out. Children need to be aware of when they are feeling stressed and learn the techniques to manage this. Self-regulation will lay the foundations for school readiness.
• Self-awareness, self-care skills and bladder control in order that they can look after their physical and emotional needs; children need to be able to identify when something is not right, what they might do about it and how to ask for help.
• Good listening and communication skills, to help them process what they are being asked to do and knowing when to ask for help.
• A strong physical core and spatial awareness so they can sit with a good posture and hold their heads up to listen to the teacher; look at the white-board and stand in a long queue for lunch, balancing a tray and negotiating those busy corridors.
• A healthy body and good physical skills in order that they can feel comfortable throughout the day, take part in PE with confidence and get themselves dressed and undressed as needed.
• Prosocial skills such as empathy, cooperation, respect and kindness will help children to see the world beyond themselves and understand that the experience of others is often different and that’s fine; helping others doesn’t take something away from them but will make them feel good.
• Ability to be inquisitive, recognise risks, problem solve, speak up and challenge what is not right – this will keep them safe…

To achieve this, we must ensure that children have plentiful opportunities to be active, access fresh air and spend time in natural environments. We need to enable them to celebrate diversity, build their confidence through experiencing the arts and being creative, alongside adults who understand and care about them. So yes…children need to read, write and know how to count in order to have the best opportunities as adults, but I believe all these things and more will arise when the priority is placed on children’s physical and mental wellbeing as an indicator that they are ready for school.

It is not unusual to hear a practitioner asking a child to come and apologise to another child immediately following an altercation. “Come and say sorry please, that wasn’t very nice”. This appears to have become an automatic generic response that gives little thought to the uniqueness of each situation – the circumstances leading up to the incident, the child’s current situation and individual needs etc, etc. Doing this also takes the emphasis away from what has happened and the focus is turned to the apology. There are several reasons why this may not always be an appropriate response from an adult. Consider the following:

Teaching empathy

As practitioners, we are teachers and just like at every other point of the nursery day, responding to challenging behaviour is a ‘teachable moment’, after all, these children are naturally learning to manage their feelings and behaviour. When we tell children to come over and use the obligatory ‘sorry’ word, we are telling them that this will make things better, when of course it won’t. What we do want is for children to feel sorry and feel empathy for the other child so they can understand the consequences of their actions, and this is what we must teach…but this will not necessarily happen straight away. We must also consider the child’s age and stage as we do with all other learning, otherwise our teaching is not appropriate. The word sorry should only be used when a child feels sorry and feels sorry for what they’ve done as opposed to sorry they’ve been caught!

If we have a row with another adult, we may feel wound up and frustrated and it may not be until a while later that we can rationalise and look at the situation from another person’s perspective. When someone says sorry to us, we know from their expression, tone of voice and body language whether they are genuinely sorry or just saying the word. Young children do not yet have the skills and experience to do this, often resulting in children’s very unemotional, quick use of the word sorry following an action they know to be wrong, because they believe it will make things better. Older children often adopt the sarcastic ‘sorrrreeeeeee’ as if to say ‘Well I’ve said it but you know I don’t mean it’. Finally, if children refuse to say sorry at all…where does that leave the adult?

But it wasn’t my fault!

All too often adults make a snap decision about who the ‘wrong doer’ is when they haven’t seen exactly what happened leading up to the incident. We tell one child they must say sorry, when inside the child might be thinking ‘but they took my toy, they should be sorry too’. In doing so we are teaching children injustice which can lead to anger and frustration. More often than not there will be a root cause that we need to find out about to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Humiliation and respect

When dealing with an incident, be mindful that to do so with others gathered around listening in may be humiliating for both parties. If a child has been harmed, they are your priority and must be comforted in a calm space so they feel safe; they probably won’t want the person who has hurt them to force a hug onto them because of its protocol. Give the other child space to consider what happened, they may decide they are sorry and want to apologise using their own words and actions.

British Values

How well do you promote British Values when dealing with unwanted behaviour?

Democracy – do all children involved have their say and do you help them explore how to better deal with the situation in future? Do we as adults take some responsibility when it is the environment that has triggered the behaviour?

Rule of law – have children been able to create the rules? How do they know what the rules are? Do you help them to understand how their actions affect others?

Individual liberty – do you help children understand that we are free to have differences of opinion? Are children’s differing thoughts captured in floor books or on display to show how much we welcome and promote the diversity of the group?

Mutual tolerance and respect – how good Is your ethos of inclusivity, how tolerant are you when dealing with challenging behaviour? Are you a good role model when it comes to apologising or admitting you were wrong?

Making the transition to school can be so overwhelming and a real upheaval for some children (and their families), if they are not physically or emotionally ready to conform to the expectations placed upon them. Yes, they may be able to count to 20, write their name and even recognise a few words, but how does this prepare them for the reality that is entering the schooling system, and all that that brings? So many physical and emotional skills and attributes are needed as a foundation to being truly ready to learn.

I believe vital skills for ‘school readiness’ include:

• Resilience, self-esteem and self-regulation, in order that the emotional challenges and frustrations that arise can be managed in a calm and rational way, so that the child is confident that even when things go wrong, they can work it out. Children need to be aware of when they are feeling stressed and learn the techniques to manage this. Self-regulation will lay the foundations for school readiness.
• Self-awareness, self-care skills and bladder control in order that they can look after their physical and emotional needs; children need to be able to identify when something is not right, what they might do about it and how to ask for help.
• Good listening and communication skills, to help them process what they are being asked to do and knowing when to ask for help.
• A strong physical core and spatial awareness so they can sit with a good posture and hold their heads up to listen to the teacher; look at the white-board and stand in a long queue for lunch, balancing a tray and negotiating those busy corridors.
• A healthy body and good physical skills in order that they can feel comfortable throughout the day, take part in PE with confidence and get themselves dressed and undressed as needed.
• Prosocial skills such as empathy, cooperation, respect and kindness will help children to see the world beyond themselves and understand that the experience of others is often different and that’s fine; helping others doesn’t take something away from them but will make them feel good.
• Ability to be inquisitive, recognise risks, problem solve, speak up and challenge what is not right – this will keep them safe…

To achieve this, we must ensure that children have plentiful opportunities to be active, access fresh air and spend time in natural environments. We need to enable them to celebrate diversity, build their confidence through experiencing the arts and being creative, alongside adults who understand and care about them. So yes…children need to read, write and know how to count in order to have the best opportunities as adults, but I believe all these things and more will arise when the priority is placed on children’s physical and mental wellbeing as an indicator that they are ready for school.