Clangers and NDNA Support UK Families in Promoting Kindness

Much-loved television series Clangers has joined forces with the UK’s voice of the nursery sector to bring thoughts about kindness to young children and their families.

Today, National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) a charity that supports early years care and learning, and much-loved pre-school brand Clangers, reveal a new partnership. They will work together to deliver a new month-long programme to support nurseries to teach kindness, running from Monday 18th September to Sunday 22nd October, 2017.

The partnership with NDNA, follows a piece of research commissioned by Clangers which asked 1,400 parents of 2-6 year olds how they teach their children to be kind.

The study, carried out by One Poll, found that UK parents are working very hard to teach their children to be kind, 30% of UK parents try to nurture kindness in their children from birth, 32% begin at age one, a quarter wait until age two, and only 13% wait until their child is three or above before trying to instil kindness. Meaning the average age children start to be taught kindness is 1.25.

Furthermore, across Britain, parents are teaching their children to be kind in lots of different ways. More than 50% of parents nurture kind behaviour in their children by being kind themselves, 48% talk to their children about their actions to help them learn, 31% undertake kind acts together, 56% make a point of praising kind acts or attempts at kindness, 12% use role playing, among much much more.

Kindness is an innate part of the Clangers’ adventures and is always demonstrated in the characters’ actions, so the new programme of activity uses the Clangers’ assets and themes of the show to create materials that encourage children to have fun, whilst embedding the concept of being kind.

Purnima Tanuku OBE, CEO of the National Day Nurseries Association, said: “With so many parents working hard to teach their children kindness and tolerance from such a young age, it felt apt for NDNA and Clangers to work together on this project.

“The activities that we have put together provide a fun and exciting way to bring kindness education into nurseries and family homes across the country. We look forward to seeing how the children develop over the course of the five weeks and how it will support practitioners and parents too.”

Jeremy Banks, CEO of Coolabi Group, which owns Clangers, comments: “Kindness is an integral part of the Clangers’ lives, and something we have been championing since the series re-launched. Knowing that UK parents are working so hard to nurture kindness in their children, this partnership with NDNA seemed the perfect way for all of us to spread kindness with families even further.”

Child development expert Dr Jacqueline Harding, who consulted with the Clangers team on the study comments: “Our research found that parents are incredibly keen to help their children get to grips with being kind from a very early age, and that they’re always looking for new ways to do this.

“I’m a huge supporter of this new campaign to teach kindness in nurseries. Empathy and truly understanding the needs of others is essential in adult life and, developmentally speaking, these important skills are fostered and learnt at an early age.”

Each week will have its own theme to be used by nursery practitioners and an activity guide will contain around five activities including how the activity supports learning. It will include detailed instructions on how to carry out the activity including tips for best practice and follow-up work. The guide will also include a take-home activity that children can do at home. Topics will include kindness to each other, family (parents, carers, grandparents, pets), the environment (plants and animals), our community, and ourselves (physical and mental).

Clangers, from international media group and rights owner Coolabi Group, has been championing kindness since 2016 when it launched its #ClangersForKindness campaign. To date Clangers has generated over 10k kindness wishes and pledges from children and families, taken its kindness activation to festivals events across the UK and provided tips and advice to families via its Facebook page and bespoke kindness microsite.

Clangers is available to watch on CBeebies and will launch brand new episodes from its second series in September 2017.

For more information, please contact:

Fiona McGarva
Sundae Communications
0161 711 0517 / 07786 434313
fiona@todayissundae.co.uk