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Last Updated on April 7, 2025
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Often children start at our nurseries at the age of 10 to 12 months, usually we find this ties in with mothers’ returning to work after maternity leave. This is also, however, an age at which separation anxiety becomes commonplace.
Children joining us at this age may have spent much of their time enjoying one-to-one time with their parent or carer but, as they grow older, they have to get used to sharing adult attention. They also need to learn to share toys, to take turns, to start looking out for and supporting their friends and to understand routines.
Gaining experience with children of a similar age helps to prepare them for school where they may be in a classroom with 20 to 30 children. If a child is unused to being left by their parent and with other children, settling into school can be a challenge.
We often receive feedback from local schools that children who have attended our Thrive nurseries are confident and settle well into school routines.
One of the benefits of our Thrive nurseries is our commitment to children spending supervised time outside and exploring safe outdoor spaces. At our Nature Kindergartens this ethos is extended to ensure pre-school children spend at least half of their time learning and exploring outside.
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).
When their parent leaves, children are naturally afraid that they may not come back for them. Through experience, the child learns to trust that their parent will return. Our nursery teams and managers are well-trained to understand this anxiety and help to ensure each child’s individual needs are met and that they form new attachments.
For those children who remain at home with a parent or family member until they are two or three years’ old, socialisation with other children is an important part of their time at nursery. It is not until around two-years-old that children actually start to play together.
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