Connecting with nature after the COVID pandemic in a nursery garden and wider community

Project summary

The impact of COVID on the staff, school and wider community at Kay Rowe Nursery School and Children's centre was significant. The team became aware through contact with families that a significant number of children especially those with SEND and vulnerable children living in poverty were not accessing the outside due to anxiety around COVID. Most of these families did not have gardens and have limited space indoors.

"Froebel's principles of the importance of experiences in nature and the way it can support children to understand the world around them seemed to be a really important place to start to rebuild these families confidence in exploring outside with their children." Rabia Rahman, Kay Rowe Nursery

The project focused on these children and families and their engagement with nature. The team wanted to offer children and families experiences in the nursery garden, at home and in the local community supported by caring, knowledgeable practitioners. They hoped to develop an understanding of the benefits to the whole family of engagement with nature through respectful encouragement and support by offering first hand real experiences such as gardening together on family days and going on forest school outings together.

The team developed short videos made by the team in Bengali, Arabic, French and Gujerati as families in the setting value videos in their home language. The videos help practitioners to support families to understand the value of engagement with nature and celebrate families own cultural knowledge of growing and cooking vegetables.

Watch...