Helping Children SHINE to School and Beyond – Working with Children of All Ages From Toddlers to Teens.
Supporting Emotions in The Early Years
PROVIDING STAFF TRAINING AND ON-GOING GUIDANCE TO A PRE-SCHOOL AND NURSERY SETTING IN HERTFORDSHIRE SURROUNDING SUPPORTING EMOTIONS IN THE EARLY YEARS.
Little Stars Pre-School and Nursery
Providing Staff Training and Ongoing Guidance in Hertfordshire to Strengthen Emotional Well-being and Support Emotions in the Early Years.
Overview
Sunny Kids Shine worked in partnership with Little Stars Pre-School and Nursery in Hertfordshire to provide specialist staff training and ongoing guidance to support children’s emotional development and wellbeing in the early years.
The support took place over a 4-week period and included:
- Staff training,
- whole-setting observations.
- Assessing practitioner and setting needs.
- Meetings with the nursery manager.
- Developing strategies to support reflective practice and long-term cultural change.
The aim was to strengthen practitioners’ confidence and consistency in responding to children’s emotions, while embedding a nurturing, emotionally safe, and trauma-informed approach across the whole setting.
Why Support was Needed
With the new guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to help early years settings make the most of the increase to the Early Years Pupil Premium. The manager contacted us, wanting to be proactive and use “fresh eyes” to enhance the support for children’s emotional development and well-being within the setting.
Practitioners had highlighted challenges in:
- Recognising and responding to children’s emotions.
- Supporting children to safely express feelings,
- Managing emotionally heightened moments and confidently modelling emotional regulation themselves.
There was also a need to strengthen staff understanding of how behaviour communicates unmet emotional needs, particularly during times of distress, transition, frustration, or separation.
The setting wanted to ensure that:
- Children felt emotionally safe, understood, and supported.
- Staff responses were calm, consistent, and nurturing.
- The nursery’s emotional climate fostered trust, a sense of belonging, and positive relationships.
The support aimed not only to improve practitioner confidence, but also to create sustainable whole-setting change through reflective practice and a shared understanding of emotional development in the early years.
Supporting Professionals
Training and guidance were delivered using a relational and trauma-informed approach, providing practitioners with practical strategies and opportunities for reflection to strengthen their understanding of children’s emotional experiences and behaviours.
The training focused on helping staff understand that emotional behaviours are forms of communication and that children require co-regulation from emotionally available adults before they can develop self-regulation skills independently.
Key Areas Covered:
- Understanding emotional development in the early years.
- Recognising emotional cues and behaviours as communication.
- Supporting children through co-regulation and validation.
- Using language, tone, and connection to support emotional safety.
- Helping children identify, name, and manage feelings in healthy ways.
- Reflecting on practitioner emotional responses and self-awareness.
- Understanding the impact of adult behaviour modelling on children’s emotional development.
Practitioners were encouraged to:
- Reflect openly on current practice.
- Share experiences and challenges.
- Develop more consistent approaches across the team.
The training emphasised the importance of emotionally attuned adults who can remain calm, empathetic, and connected during emotionally heightened moments, helping children feel safe and understood rather than punished or dismissed.
Supporting Families
Alongside strengthening practitioner confidence, the training also focused on improving partnership working with families around emotional wellbeing and child development.
Practitioners developed greater confidence in:
- Talking with parents about emotional development.
- Explaining behaviours through a child-development and emotional lens.
- Sharing practical strategies to support emotional regulation at home.
This helped staff provide families with reassurance and guidance in a supportive, non-judgmental way.
The setting began promoting greater consistency between home and nursery by:
- Encouraging shared emotional language.
- Reinforcing calming and co-regulation strategies.
- Helping children feel understood and supported across both environments.
This strengthened relationships between practitioners and families while increasing parental confidence in managing “big feelings” at home.
Supporting the Whole Setting
A whole-setting approach was implemented to ensure that emotional well-being became embedded within the nursery culture rather than viewed as an isolated intervention.
Whole-setting observations and leadership meetings helped identify:
- Strengths within current practice.
- Areas requiring further development.
- Opportunities to improve consistency across the provision.
A strategy for ongoing reflective practice was developed to support long-term sustainability and continuous improvement.
This included:
- Creating opportunities for staff reflection.
- Strengthening emotionally consistent responses across the team.
- Embedding nurturing approaches into everyday routines and interactions.
As a result, the setting began to develop a calmer, more emotionally responsive environment where children’s feelings were recognised, accepted, and supported.
Our Impact
Following the training and ongoing guidance, practitioners reported significant improvements in confidence, consistency, and emotional awareness across the setting.
Outcomes for Practitioners
- Increased confidence in supporting children during emotional moments.
- Improved understanding of emotional development and regulation.
- More consistent use of emotion-based language and co-regulation strategies.
- Greater self-awareness and reflective practice.
- Stronger team cohesion and consistency in responses.
Outcomes for Children
- A calmer and more nurturing environment.
- Improved emotional expression and communication.
- Reduced behavioural incidents linked to emotional overwhelm.
- Increased feelings of safety, trust, and belonging.
Outcomes for Families
- Stronger communication with practitioners.
- Increased reassurance and guidance around emotional development.
- Greater consistency between home and nursery approaches.
- Improved relationships between families and the setting.
Creating Long-Term Change
This case study demonstrates how investing in early years emotional well-being training can create meaningful and sustainable change across an entire setting.
By strengthening practitioners’ confidence, reflective practice, and emotionally attuned responses, the nursery created a more supportive environment for children, families, and staff alike.
The nursery manager highlighted that the training would have a lasting impact on the emotional culture of the setting, helping to build an environment where:
- Feelings are accepted,
- emotions are safely explored.
- Children are supported to develop lifelong emotional resilience and wellbeing skills from the earliest stages of development.