As a team of early year's educators, we have always been fascinated by the potential to accelerate early learning and development by bringing children and older people together to support and nurture each other.

Over the last five years, our small charity Ready Generations, has been designing and planning an intergenerational nursery located at the heart of a large care village in Chester. The Belong Village and Nursery in Belong opened together in July 2022. More than 70 older people and 40 children now call the Village their home. The older people combine wisdom, experience and high expectations with laughter and playfulness to create the most joyous learning environment every day.

We feel so lucky to have such a diverse group of adults modelling and scaffolding our children's development every day. We see them as expert educators, working alongside us to extend and add layers of richness to every opportunity and experience.

Over the year, we have witnessed many amazing and heartwarming interactions between babies, children and their grand-friends. We have captured and named them halo moments as they have been intensely immersive, reciprocal and compassionate. This has led us to revisit our thinking around professional observation and assessment, recognising that meaningful observation takes concentrated time and attention to capture the impact of such powerful interactions. We have called this our pedagogy of noticing. We have also reflected on the value of slowing down daily routines that often rush children from one thing to the next. Working alongside older people has helped us to see that speed does not always result in progress. The pace of life in the Care Village is gentle and soothing. The impact of this on the children and their families has been transformational. We are now keen advocates of the slow movement which is developing pace across education.

In this Practice Insight, we are keen to share as much as possible about what we have learnt. We recognise that not everyone can integrate early education and adult social care as closely as we have been able to through our shared site, but we hope you will be inspired to have a go in whatever way you can. The rewards are just wonderful!

Sue Egersdorff

Co-founder Ready Generations, sue@readygenerations.co.uk @readygen www.readygeneration.co.uk