Nursery World - When education cares

Young children do not separate 'care' from 'learning' and neither should we, says Professor Cathy Nutbrown

A few years ago, I led a small project to find out what young
children thought of their early years settings. Practitioners in 18
settings worked with me to ask the children they worked with for their

The children talked about playing both indoors and outdoors. They talked about the many aspects of nature that they encountered while they played outside, including: bugs, snails, frogs, caterpillars, bees, worms, trees, flowers, clouds, snow, ice, water, the sun and mud. Inside, most of the children seemed to like the bricks, the home corner, dressing up, computers and stories.

Within all of these, the children told us about their imaginings. They spoke of 'real' and 'pretend', they spoke of their magic powers, invisible tiny fairies, far-away castles, world-saving superheroes and noisy dogs. Their imaginations seemed almost limitless as they conjured up fantastic possibilities in their play.

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