Toddlers learn Mandarin at Little Learners

Children aged two-and-half to five years are learning to speak Mandarin at a Maidstone nursery and are thought to be the youngest in the country to be learning this language.

Many nurseries in Maidstone and across the UK teach French or Spanish but at Little Learners Nursery at Boughton Lane, Loose, it was decided that pre-school children should learn a new and exciting language.

Manger of Little Learners, Hayley-Louise Oliver, said: "With the Confucius Classroom and Mandarin lessons being so positive and popular at New Line Learning Academy, I had the idea on promoting this within our nursery to encourage pre-schoolers to acquire new language skills. One-hour classes have been running sine September on a Monday morning and children learn simple words by playing with a range of toys. Some children have already learnt the basics of ‘hello and goodbye'."

Recently the nursery children learnt about Chinese New Year and enjoyed watching a performance about celebrating this traditional festivity at NLL Academy. The event included Kung Fu, folk dancing and lion dancing. The children also learnt in their weekly lessons about what animal year it currently is and how Chinese people celebrate the New Year.

Little Learners purpose-built premises are located within NLL Academy's state-of-the-art building. It has three specially developed rooms catering for babies, toddlers and pre-school children, a secure outdoor play area and onsite farm. In January this year the nursery had its first Ofsted inspection and was rated as ‘good' in every category.