About

A garden for the flower.
That’s where his friends are
– Otis, 4.4yrs

Who we are

A progressive school for early years children

Little Jungle is an independent school of early childhood, providing high-quality education and care for children aged between 10 months and 5 years old.

Although our children are within the nursery and pre-school age ranges, we define ourselves as a school, to reflect the importance of the early years in children’s educational journeys.

We are situated on a quiet residential street in Peckham, minutes from Peckham Rye and East Dulwich stations, making full use of the local parks and wildlife centres as well as our culturally rich communities in the day-to-day experiences we offer children.

A London reference for the Reggio Emilia approach

Supported by the Reggio Emilia approach framework, our curriculum is designed to support children and adults’ research to provide high quality education and development opportunities for all.

Little Jungle is regulated by Ofsted and follows the EYFS framework.

Our philosophy and values

Respect for the rights of children

At Little Jungle we respect the rights of all children and share a belief that “quality education is an indispensable tool to creating a democratic, inclusive, forward-looking society and citizenship” (The Charter for quality education, June 2022).

The early years form the most important time in which to establish the core values of humanity in a child’s mind. Our practice establishes values such as respect, empathy, freedom, democracy and active participation.

Through our collaborative work with children and their families, we aim to empower children to become the considerate, creative and forward-looking citizens of the future.

Our approach

Valuing creativity and research

The Little Jungle approach is rooted in an understanding that children are born as competent learners; curious and capable of constructing their own learning, through play and exploration.

We take time to listen to them and give value to their ideas and theories. We offer them a variety of high-quality materials and experiences to provoke thinking and build skills. We help children to develop strong, logical working processes and elastic thinking, so they can become confident, independent and motivated learners.

Inspired by Reggio Emilia

Although our approach is continuously evolving and inspired by many schools of thought, we are particularly inspired by the childhood centres of Reggio Emilia, who share our philosophy on the rights of children and their strong potential to learn.

Our children

We recognise and respect that children learn and develop at their own pace. However, in order to help organise our activities, children are split into three rough groups:

These age ranges allow for developmental differences, but also take into consideration the importance of social learning and the benefits that come from mixing children of varied stages of development.

Parents & carers

Communication and dialogue

We understand the vital role that parents and carers play in their children’s development and work hard to build relationships with all the caregivers we meet.

Face-to-face conversations are best, but where this is not possible, we are happy to talk on the phone or by email. We also encourage dialogue via our online learning portal, where parents can find or share observations of their child, and interact with us.

Participation and community

We encourage parents to get involved in day-to-day experiences with children and share moments of Little Jungle life. We organise a variety of workshops to support learning for children and adults and our Parents and Educators Association (PEA) organise social and fundraising events across the year, all of which nurture a spirit of participation, inclusion and community across the school.