The importance of bespoke nurseries lies in their ability to provide high-quality, personalized care and education for young children.
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai, founded by Saanika Ghandi, is a bespoke British nursery school in the heart of Al Safa 2, which has been igniting a love of learning for over 18 happy years. The school provides premium care and education to children aged 45 days to 4 years old and offers a ‘home away from home’ experience with high levels of parent partnership and support.
It is the first nursery school in Dubai to gain the Curiosity Approach Accreditation and use this alongside the British EYFS curriculum in its child-led approach to learning. The school recognizes each child as a capable being and strongly believes that children are the centre of their own development.
In Kangaroo Kids Dubai, there is a special kind of magic floating around its nursery. The kind of magic that is fueled by passionate teachers who enrich children’s lives through exploration and adventure. The kind of magic that sparks curiosity illuminates the imagination and shows that anything is possible – as long as you believe.
Home Away from Home
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai is on a mission to achieve the following objectives:
- Creating a Community: The school is a community, sharing each day in a safe environment with a strong emphasis on support and partnership. All children and their families attending the nursery feel valued as a unique family and a part of the school’s vibrant, inclusive community. Kangaroo Kids is a home away from home that is built on trust, support, and understanding.
- Inspiring Active Learning: The school’s team of highly skilled practitioners inspire children to be actively engaged with experiences that facilitate purposeful learning and long-term development. It provides bespoke learning experiences to each unique child to ensure they are active participants. Learning is everywhere and in every conversation.
- Being Positive and Kind to All: The school aims to approach all situations with kindness and positivity. It teaches the children the value of this moral, and as practitioners, the school model the behavior in all it does. Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai actively encourages kindness to the earth with its recycling and eco-activities.
Instilling ‘The Curiosity Approach’
A modern-day teaching philosophy fueled by a passion for play, a love of nature, and an understanding that the child is the true curriculum of Kangaroo Kids Nursery. An approach that inspires awe and wonder in all those who engage with it.
The core teaching of the nursery’s ‘The Curiosity Approach’ is the significance and benefit of moving away from over-stimulating technology and plastic toys and instead focusing on the wonders of the natural world and authentic, open-ended resources. A toy car will always only ever be a toy car, but a stick, however – with a dash of imagination, this seemingly mundane stick can be transformed into a magic wand, a microphone, or a witch’s broom!
Through adopting this child-led and play-based approach, children are recognized as capable beyond measure and become the ‘pilots of their own play’ – the center of their own development. In 2020, the school began the 12-month-long journey towards becoming the first Curiosity Approach Accredited setting in Dubai; it was a wonderful adventure for the school.
In each classroom, the school has Curiosity Corners brimming with awe-inspiring trinkets, mark-making stations filled with art materials, and cozy areas that are perfect for a cuddle and a good book between all the daily nursery excitement. The school’s passionate teachers set up activities based on the children’s current interests and use ‘in-the-moment’ planning to create meaningful invitations to play and learn.
Facilitating a Lifelong Love of Learning
The school aims to nurture the ‘thinkers and doers’ of the future and facilitate a lifelong love of learning. The natural world makes its way into every aspect of the nursery, and through adopting The Curiosity Approach Accreditation, the school was able to expand further its love of nature and the passion for protecting it in everything the school does.
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai inspires awe and wonder in its little Kangaroos through bug hunts, cloud spotting, gardening, and spending time with rather interesting nursery pets, Lucky the Giant African Spurred Tortoise and the Giant African Snails.
The school embraces controlled risk, love to climb trees, and thrives on fun and creativity. It recognizes the wonder that is found in the simplest of things and aims to empower the children in its care to be the best little humans that they can possibly be.
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai is the first Curiosity Approach Accredited setting in Dubai and has aimed to challenge the way children are educated, going back to the roots and letting children be children again.
Continuous Learning through Adversities
The COVID-19 pandemic was a huge challenge for the school as all learning went online, and teaching toddlers on an iPad is a challenging task. Regardless of this, the school established online learning programs, and its teachers took to social media to share educational videos and inspire the children, even from a distance.
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai believes in parent partnership and works closely with parents to gain a deeper understanding of their home life so that it can mimic the feeling of home in the nursery school.
A Bespoke Nursery School
The school’s major achievements, accolades, and recognitions include:
- Being the First Curiosity Approach Accredited setting in Dubai,
- Forest School approach to play,
- Hygee in the Early Years Accredited.
Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai plans on expanding the learning and growth of the children in Dubai for years to come. It aims at having a positive impact on the lives of families all across Dubai.
Kangaroo Kids Dubai has adopted a ‘Forest School’ approach to play by creating a nature-based community where its trained and talented teachers nurture child-led learning and exploration by facilitating meaningful and holistic experiences. Nestled in its beautiful outdoor garden of 25,000 square feet, there is a magical place called ‘Forest School,’ complete with big leafy trees that provide shade while the school delves into the natural world below.
On any given day, people can find little Kangaroos crouched down and drawn into their latest bug hunt, building bug hotels, and learning about seasonal changes to the natural environment. Within the ‘Forest School,’ the nursery has created a pretend fire pit which is perfect for sharing experiences with one another, reading books together, and mindfully watching the clouds go by.
The children’s well-being is at the foundation of all Kangaroo Kids Nursery Dubai does. It understands how important it is to encourage sustainability and a love for nature in daily nursery lives. Through nurturing child-led discovery, it recognizes all opportunities to mentor the holistic growth of the children for positive lifelong impacts. Its culture is based on collaboration and embracing challenges together.
By doing this, it allows the children to blossom into their true potential and develop resilience, empathy, and a greater sense of connection with themselves, their peers, and the environment.
