The Hatchery

THE HATCHERY

Nest Eggs are short videos that elevate and inspire you to new levels. They concentrate on one topic and dive deep into its meaning so that you see and feel the topic. All illustrated with practical know-how's and how-to's.

Our NEST EGGS have hatched!

Heart learning, not hard learning to create beautiful environments and elevate your practice.

Do you want to follow the heart in your practice, rather than following a guidebook or the latest craze? How about knowledge, skills, and attitudes that help YOU to achieve your teaching outcomes and goals? Get the tools, ideas, and inspiration you need to strengthen the relationship with your children, teachers, and families and prepare a beautiful environment for, from, and with heart.

Content built around YOU.

Talking the heart talk is one thing, but walking the heart walk, and for the long haul, is quite another. We know how important it is to find the right tools and inspiration that help you STAY on the heart path and create beautiful environments for our youngest children. It's our goal to provide the most concise, effective tools that you can apply to your own heart-centered teaching practice and care.

We are hatching Nest eggs all the time. Sometimes an egg cracks, and we need to start again.
You will find the hatched Nest Eggs that are available here in The Hatchery. They are part of our bundles.

PUT LOVE ON THE MENU

More than a career, for most of us this work with children is a calling. And we get to do what we love (teaching - the big picture). That’s important. But we also want to love what we do. There might be a lot to do in our roles, but we miss so much if we are always rushing. So how do you do that?

Put yourself on the ‘care-for’ list ♥︎ It isn’t about having time, it’s about making it. This work is worth it. Just a little time for a big ‘return’. Make it a ritual: pour a cuppa and listen to our heart-words. Sit, soak, simmer.

See below what's been hatched!

Preparation Head, Heart and Hand

The importance of being prepared in the fullest sense - as teachers AND as people, in the heads AND hearts, is too important to be left to chance.

The Sensory Banquet

A beautiful and homely environment provides children with a multi-sensory banquet where they can choose from a smorgasbord of offerings.

The Queen of Quotes

Quotes miss the head and hit the heart. They are medicine for the soul and the perfect bite sized chunk that may help with making your philosophy alive.

The Christmas Fairies

Our children, parents, families, our team, our community - we could all use some Christmas cheer. Let’s make this festive season a HEART time.

Pottering and tinkering

Say a huge yes to: the child's agenda and no-pressured playing, limitless ideas and possibilities, and being hands-on, hearts-in with the physical environment.

The Nest maker

How do we take care of each other, and the environment so that our children feel loved, are in relationship, and can play freely, wildly, creatively and imaginatively.

Play memoirs

How can you use the lens of the heart to create a more authentic ‘system’ of documenting the child’s learning?

Urge or Interest?

Play is universal. Do we need to plan for it? What do we REALLY need to observe and look for? What IS the child's interest?

Shine the Light

How authentic is your appraisal? Do you find it easier to write a peer review and assessment or to write through the lens of love?

Love letters

Children start in the heart, and they depart in the heart. But it's also the family that starts and departs in the heart. A love letter is shining the light on them, written intuitively, through the lens of the heart.

Heart meetings

Heart meetings are the meat of meetings. If you feel bogged down by the meetings you attend already, the last thing you need is another meeting on your schedule... unless it's a HEART MEET.

Real life work

We want our children to 'download' adults who love life. Who potter and tinker, and who love and care for their patch. We need to make the children's time in our care as homely and real as possible.

The Heart bank

As much as young minds need nurturing, so do young hearts. When we practice from the heart our focus is on making deposits in the heart bank, experiences that speak to the children and touch their hearts.

Growing a vision

Are you and your team on autopilot, without a compass, and running out of fuel? What is your vision for your setting? Is your team fully on board with it? How is it being communicated and implemented?

Team or Unit?

Ask yourself, is your group a team or a unit? Is your team knitted together with a cohesive set of beliefs, values and philosophy? How do you create a team that is a unit, keeps it meaningfull and keeps their identity?

The gift of animals

Are you, or want to, keeping animals at your place? Just like the children, our animals need us to provide love and care. That goes beyong a cage and some food.

Slowing it down

Are we ‘hurrying’ children’s childhood? Is what’s next really that important? Do you children have time for ‘want nothing time’? Do we give time to our children to rest, restore and rejuvenate?

Enrich or distract?

Does your talking enrich or distract?

When you talk with the children, do you speak from the head or from the heart? Are you in tune or is your talking a distraction to their absorption?

Zeal and Zest

Do you wake up in the morning excited and refreshed to go to work or do you feel exhausted and are dragging yourself to get there? Are you tired of hearing yet another idea, stretched for time and about to snap? How full and topped up are you?

Stretched for time?

If we focus too much on what we have to do or should be doing, we are not present and the child doesn’t get the gift of connection. What and how do we slow down to keep up with the children.

Creating flow

Do your children have an authentic flow they can go with? Is that flow meaningful, and predictable and does it bring security? Do your children feel nourished and nurtured and are they in flow to play freely and imaginatively?

Harmonious or hurried?

We are in a busy environment, how much harmony are you cultivating as an individual and as a team? How can you bring more simplicity and be more harmonious, in your place and in your practice?

Feeling overwhelmed?

How can you balance what has and needs to be done and what you’d like to do as part of a calm, heart-centred environment? How can you manage the reality and take power over what you can and can’t do?

Why Christmas?

Regardless of religious beliefs, we can focus on the spirit of Christmas - love, family, and togetherness. We can match the children’s joy for this time of the year. This is the season to create memories and shared sacred moments as part of the curriculum of life.

Authentic Appraisals

Be you and be true. Think about how your journey of being a professional can lead you either towards your heart or towards your head. What’s real? What’s fake ? We are in the business of creating an authentic appraisal.

Sustainability, doing versus being

Do you re act from fear or go forward in LOVE? Are you following a deep connection with nature and supporting children to fall in love with the planet? Are you aware of all the creative and authentic ways of BEING sustainable opposed to DOING sustainability. Be the change you wish to see.

Staying true to yourself

Follow your bliss and be the first rate version of who you are not the second rate version that sometimes we feel we need to be. The biggest gift we can give children is our authentic selves. How do you stay true to your own convictions?

Preparing for urges

There are certain universal urges that can be witnessed in children’s play – things they just feel compelled to do and driven to repeat, in many ways and with many objects. How do you set up your play space for the play urges/schema to unfold?

Raw materials & Loose parts

Children are and should always be the ‘script writer' of their play and be able to intrinsically follow their inner nudges. These URGES can unfold when the loose parts are plentiful. What are the core things that allow children to engage in truly imaginative play?

Simplicity

Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe it’s time to bring more simplicity into your space, pace, and place.

The art of story telling

Are you providing a literary feast for your children? How can you help children to build their authentic imagination?

Parents need care too!

Every parent wants to be seen, heard, and understood. How can you build authentic connections and be an anchor for your parents?

What is play?

What is play? Do you provide a rich environment that caters for children's self chosen free play or are you merely providing entertainment to keep them occupied?

What is your role in play?

What is the role of the adult in the child's play? Is your child an empty vessel to be filled? Who is in the driver seat? What is your role in the child's play?

Does real life work have a place in play?

Pottering and tinkering, real life work, how important are these to the child to witness, observe and witness. Do they interfere with the child's play or are they part of their play?

The invitation

How do you set the scene, seen and unseen, and invite the child to participate to and engage in the programme and actively play, explore and discover?

Rituals and Mealtimes

Rituals are the fuel for play. In a nutshell, what is a ritual and how can we use it to make mealtimes ‘heart moments’, rather than ‘hard’ moments?

Real conversations

Are we having real conversations or are we having interrogations? Are our ‘chats’ there to transmit knowledge or are we chatting to connect? How can we develop children's oral language when they are spending less time in an over protected real world and more time in an under protected virtual world?

Love languages

Love languages, what are they, and how can we identify them and use them to connect and support the children AND the adults?

Be a champion for children

As an ece teacher you witness children's daily experiences, understand developmental needs, and identify when systems aren't working. How can you be the person who consistently advocates for children's rights, needs, and optimal development. Your advocacy impacts not just individual children but families, communities, and future generations.

Being in flow as a team

When a team works in synchronized harmony, fully engaged and energised by their collective work with children, we will have an increased job satisfaction, reduced burnout, better quality interactions with children, and more creative problem-solving. Time passes quickly, communication feels effortless, and the team instinctively responds to children's needs. It’s a win-win situation for both adult and child. Be in flow and prepare in head, heart and hand.

Resourcefulness - From waste to wonder

When we prepare the environment for our children we rely on open-ended, diverse materials that spark creativity and problem-solving. This requires a certain level of resourcefulness. Do you have the mindset to see multiple uses in an object, and be creative in collecting and re-using materials? Where and how can you find, collect, store and preserve materials, loose parts items and other materials that have an open-ended use?

Music, beyond instruments

Children are naturally musical beings - they respond to rhythm before birth. For children music is a way of connecting, expression and joy, rather than perfection. Following children's natural curiosity and responses to sound, nurturing listening, experimenting, and expressing is the heart of music experiences, rather than particular skills.

Meaningful art experiences

Art as another way children communicate thoughts and feelings. Is your space inviting and inspiring creativity and does it value exploration and expression rather than predetermined outcomes?