Blog

Autumn Leaves and Conkers Please - Conker Activities from Gemma's Childminding, a Hygge Accredited setting.

'We love to incorporate natural, eco-friendly and recycled products into our play. Our activities are very much child-led these days rather than adult-initiated. I find that being around nature whether this is outdoors or bringing nature indoors really supports the children's learning and wellbeing.

I've noticed some real changes in the children since adapting to a more 'Hygge' based environment and embracing a slow pedagogy.

Some snapshots of how we have enjoyed incorporating conkers into our everyday play this season.'

Woodland Theme Autumn Display

We set up a small display of interest for the children to explore. Lots of natural resources including conkers, pinecones and leaves. We incorporated various lights and some magnifying boxes for them to identify the different textures and colours up close.

They especially loved feeding the conkers to the woodland animals.

Pl...

Autumn time has to be one of my favourite times of the year. Having Oliver now makes it even more exciting too as I take a moment to stand back and watch him experience everything.

We have loved getting outside each day and doing a daily walk. Talking about all the things we notice each day and notice any changes. Doing this is very much inspired by the practice of the Danes with the daily walk children in early education do. We stop at our favourite tree as well to document its changes as we move through the year. 

I also think it's important that we as adults take the time to just pause and appreciate the slow moments of joy in the day. We can't teach hygge and living well if we don't model it ourselves. I've built this into our daily walk and we will often find a little spot to just sit and watch what's going on. 

On our walk yesterday we took great enjoyment in collecting up some of the fallen leaves and twigs. We then brought these back and I popped them in some water in our tu...

By Anna Webb

-My practice before the accreditation (What I needed help or guidance on)

-The vision I've created in my work

-The changes I've made to my personal life and practice

-The impact this has had on myself, the children and the setting. 

-Your next steps for future development.

Before I began the Hygge accreditation I felt we lacked direction and that we were all bringing something to the table but not being able to be consistent with the approaches, I wanted the Preschool to be relaxed and open ended and after having completed the Anna Epgrave in the moment training realised that using the child’s interests and building on this to create a more child cantered approach worked well with our cohort of children, however we still lacked direction, on signing up for the course I really hoped that this would support us with mental wellbeing, self-regulation, behaviour management and the links with the outside being that we are a Forest School setting.

I started the course...

This year at Kinderworld Day Nursery the staff team have embarked on a journey together studying for the Hygge in Early Years Accreditation. We started this because as the manager of the nursery I could see and feel how the covid pandemic has had such a detrimental effect on the health and wellbeing of many families, staff and children. As a team, we wanted to feel calmer, less stressed and happier. Coming myself from a very Hygge home (as my mother is Danish) and having grown up with the concept of Hygge and basing our nursery around this when we first opened 25 years ago, along with other Danish philosophies and what we called always called ‘home from home’, I was overjoyed to find this course so I could better share our ethos with my staff and the families that attend. I am so happy that finally Hygge is recognised outside of Denmark, as it is a way of life and can really only be embraced if everyone understands it and is on board with it- creating a culture of Hygge.

At our Nurser...