Meet the Expert

“I have worked in Early Years for nearly 30 years, so when I came to KatieB Kids, I certainly wasn’t new to working with young children. What was new to me was the way things were done here.

I came from a setting with a very different ethos and pedagogical approach, and I’ll be the first to admit that it took some adjustment! After so many years of working in a particular way, stepping into an environment where children were given so much freedom to lead their own learning, explore open-ended resources and follow their interests required me to rethink some of what had become familiar.

But once I got into the swing of it, I couldn’t imagine ever going back.

I began to see first-hand what happens when we trust children to be active participants in their own learning rather than always determining what that learning should look like for them. I saw how deeply they could concentrate when something had genuinely captured their interest, how creatively they used resources without a predetermined outcome, and how much learning could emerge naturally through play when adults knew when to step in and, just as importantly, when to step back.

After more than three decades in the profession, discovering a different way of thinking about Early Years gave me a real second wind. I became genuinely invested in child-led learning and open-ended play because I could see the benefits unfolding in front of me every day.

These days, I get to experience KatieB Kids from another perspective too: as a grandparent.

My grandson attends our Grandi space, and having become so passionate about the approach myself, I genuinely wouldn’t have wanted him to go anywhere else.

One particularly proud moment came at his two-year review with the Health Visiting Team. They commented on how articulate and mature he was for his age and asked which nursery he attended. As both his grandmother and an Early Years Educator at KatieB Kids, I can’t pretend I wasn’t incredibly proud!

For me, it reinforced just how much I have come to believe in the approach that initially felt so different to everything I had previously known.

One of the wonderful things about working in Early Years is that, however experienced you become, there is always more to learn. More than 25 years into my career, KatieB Kids challenged me to look at my practice through a different lens, and ultimately reminded me why I chose this profession in the first place.

Sometimes expertise isn’t about believing you already know everything.

Sometimes it’s having the experience to recognise when there might be an even better way.”