At Wild Hearts we recognise the huge impact of outdoor play on early years development and we prioritise time spent outside in nature as much as possible - it's the "wild" in Wild Hearts! Outdoor play supports the whole child: their intellectual, emotional, social and physical development. By being outside and surrounded by nature, children experience an ever-changing and free-flowing environment that stimulates all the senses, strengthens their bodies, and provides ongoing

At Wild Hearts, we like to use the image of a tree's rings to think about how a child develops throughout childhood and how to best support them at each stage. The centre, the youngest part of the tree, is the child in infancy (0-6 months) - at this stage, infants are completely dependent on their primary caregiver(s) and they tend to prefer familiar attachment figures for comfort. During this time, childcare looks more like holistic family support to establish feeding, sleep

From isolated pandemic parenting to connected community childcare