Family Run Nursery: Our Take on the Modern Family

This month we’ve taken a page in The Guardian’s Modern Family series, and it runs in print and online on 29 August.

We spent a long time deciding what to put in that space. In the end we wrote about families, what they look like now, and what that asks of a nursery because it’s the thing closest to our hearts, and the reason this family run nursery group exists at all.

It started with one family

Hungry Caterpillars began because Olivia and Tim needed childcare for their own children, and couldn’t quite find what they were hoping for. So they built it.

Eight nurseries later, across West London and Buckinghamshire, we’re still a family run nursery group, and we still ask ourselves the same question about everything we do:

“Would we want this for our own children?” 

It’s a simple question. It’s also the most useful one we’ve found. It has guided decisions about our food, our teams, our rooms and our gardens, and it keeps us honest in a way no policy ever could.

Families come in every shape

One of the loveliest things about our nurseries is how different our families are from one another. There’s no such thing as a standard family, and we’ve never tried to design for one.

That’s why we offer 15 and 30 hours of funded childcare for eligible families, and why we try to be genuinely flexible about how those hours work. Good early years education should fit around your family’s life, not the other way round.

Room to be curious

The other half of it is what happens once your child is with us.

We follow the Curiosity Approach, and we design our nurseries to feel like an extension of home rather than an institution. Natural wood and plants. Soft, earthy colours. Real objects to handle instead of plastic. Space to become properly absorbed in something, indoors and out.

The colour arrives when the children do. Anything to do with making, painting and creating is bright and joyful and gloriously messy — which is exactly what the calm background is there for.

Our educators are experienced enough to know when to join in and when to quietly step back. It’s how children grow in confidence, independence and creativity, the things that stay with them long after their first day with us.

Come and see us

Our nurseries are holding open days throughout September, and we’d love to meet you.

Come and say hello to the teams, wander through the rooms, watch what the children are doing. Ask us anything you like. Then decide whether it feels right for your family, because that’s the only test that really matters.

A page in a newspaper can only tell you what we believe. A visit shows you whether we mean it.