Hygge Case Study: Starting with a very colourful environment

Little Bird’s Preschool is a charity run preschool which sits in the heart of the beautiful town of Swanage Dorset. It has always been a popular preschool over its history and has certainly moved with the times. As with many Preschools the Little bird’s environment was very colourful and busy with bright pictures, posters and backing paper covering every possible wall and space. Nearly all the toys and resources were plastic which limited the children’s imaginations.

Step forward to January 2018. The Preschool was taken over by Jodie Edmunds, and Jude French became her deputy. Together they had a vision to transform Little Birds into a more natural and simulating environment. The other preschool practitioners jumped aboard, and the process began. Being a charity run preschool it meant that we had to do a lot of fundraising to enable us to buy resources and start the transformation. Our preschool office was situated within the school’s staff room which made it very hard for us to have private conversations and meetings with outside agencies and parents which happens on a regular basis. We pride ourselves on not only giving each child a loving, and caring environment, but we have good relationships with the parents and extended families which is why we have an ‘open door’ policy. Our first major purchase was a large wooden office build which we were able to put on the preschool’s premises giving us the private space that we needed.

Slowly we started to exchange the plastic toys with natural resources such as pinecones, feathers, wooden blocks, sticks, shells, stones, etc and our walls were covered with hessian, and natural coloured backing paper. We started to notice a change in the children’s behaviour which became calmer and they were more engaged in their chosen activities.

We were slowly getting there but still had so much more that we wanted to change. Jodie saw the Hygge in the early years course advertised which she signed up to along with Jude and a few other practitioners.

Every practitioner who completed the course found it inspiring and could not wait to bring their ideas into the preschool and feed back to the other members of staff who had not yet signed up. We were so excited, and it had given us a new lease of life. A few of us went to car boot sales and charity shops collecting wonderful treasures to bring back to the preschool. We slowly introduced the treasures and the children were intrigued.

Our role play corner is very popular so we discussed how we could change it into an area which could be whatever the children wanted it to be. The dressing up clothes were swapped for material, ribbon and pegs allowing the children to use their imaginations to invent their own characters. We also added a selection of hats, jewellery, bags and other accessories to aid with their role play. It was amazing to see the children express themselves and get into character.

We created a potion area where we added spices, and herbs as well as kitchen equipment, jars and pipettes to stimulate their senses and encourage fine motor skills. These resources were also incorporated within our playdough area.

We added a sensory area as we have a few children who struggle with their emotions, so we felt that this was important to add to our setting. We have fairy lights around the area and hanging from the ceiling, a tall bubble lamp, sensory resources such as sand and oil timers, as well as feeling books. We also play some calming music on our cd player which the children enjoy listening to.

Unfortunately, Corona virus hit which changed life as we all knew it. We took the decision to stay open for our parents who were keyworkers and vulnerable children. Although it was an extremely unpredictable time, we continued to give the children a safe, calm and happy environment. With the Hygge course still fresh in our minds we wanted to continue to make changes for the better. Our hard work and fundraising meant that we had raised enough money to extend our outside area. We wanted to create a wonderful space which would allow the children to thrive in nature. One of our parents is in the building trade and after a few meetings we were able to organise work to take place on our playground during the summer when the preschool was shut. A wooden fence was put all around the back of the garden making it a safer environment. We transformed a wasted area into a woodland space with woodchip, a hobbit house and a wooden picnic table for the children to sit together and interact. Our garden has had a makeover and we have added a herb garden for the children to look after and enjoy.  We like to spend a lot of time outside enjoying nature, so this has been an amazing transformation to our preschool. Our journey so far to improve Little Birds has been positive, and exciting. We will continue to bring the Hygge way into our preschool life.

‘We are adventurers and explorers, we are the Little Birds’.