Our rooms at nursery are on a constant journey of change in order to make them more inspiring, engaging and wonderful for our little people. We take a lot of our inspiration for our environment from the ‘Curiosity Approach’ to learning, but more than anything we design our rooms and spaces to live up to our name ‘Muddy Boots’ and our ethos of ‘Free to be’.
We have done this by ensuring our garden spaces are inviting, allowing mess and mud to play a crucial part in everyday life at nursery (I’m sure lots of you will know!) We always strive to keep our rooms as tidy as possible, but we want the children to be allowed to play and express themselves, so they often get temporarily messy!
In our inside and outside spaces, we also have a range of curious objects as well as loose parts, which are best described as:
“Materials that can be moved, carried, combined, redesigned, lined up, and taken apart and put back together in multiple ways. They are materials with no specific set of directions that can be used alone or combined with other materials.”
This links very closely with our ethos ‘Free to be’, as these items can be used in a number of ways by the children and really spark their imaginations. We also believe it gives them the independence to lead their own play and follow and test their own ideas which links very closely to the Characteristics of Effective Learning – ‘Play and Exploring’ & ‘Creating and Thinking Critically’.
The rooms are constantly developing to make them more engaging for both the children and our families. Lots of the rooms have been working on implementing ‘Hygge’ in the rooms, which makes them more comfortable and welcoming for our little people and a space to retreat to from all the mess and mud!
The team have also been using children’s family photos to create family boards as well as home link boards in some of our rooms to live up to our ‘family’ value. We strongly believe our children, families and team make Muddy Boots what it is – a caring, engaging and loving environment for our little ones to grow.
Rachel Anderson – Poppleton Nursery Manager
