Hatching Dragons is hugely proud to announce the launch of a research programme with UCL’s Institute of Education. Under the direction of Professor Dockrell at the Department of Psychology and Human Development, in which linguistics and language development are core foci, the programme will focus......
28 March, 2019No comment
This coming Thursday the 7th March is World Book Day and to celebrate, we thought why not invite the parents in to give their own story time, just to shake things up a little? Parents were asked to consider dressing up as the characters of......
06 March, 2019No commentOver the course of the next two weeks, China’s “Parliament”, the National People’s Congress (The NPC), and it’s political advisory council, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), will be meeting in what is described as China’s greatest political spectacle (see Guardian; BBC; Bloomberg; Nikkei Asian Review). 5000......
04 March, 2019No commentSo we’re into the second day of our chef trials and thankfully the last two guys ave been second to none. First off, I think it’s important to note that we’ve interviewed 15 chefs and, frankly, we’re a little amazed at how many (13) had......
27 February, 2019No comment
We were super excited to receive the Deputy Director of Oxford University’s Department of Education, Professor Victoria Murphy, last Friday at our nursery school in the heart of the City of London. As one of the lead advocates for teaching children second languages from as......
26 February, 2019No commentPaediatric First Aid Partnership We’re super excited to announce a new event first aid partnership for 2019. As part of our drive to give parents access to better, more curated events, seminars and information around parenting and child development, we’re thrilled to be joining up......
12 December, 2018No comment
This weekend is the Baby & Toddler event at the Excel London. Best and biggest Black Friday related event for parents and expecting parents. Perfect chance to get your hands on buggies, toys, baby clothing, nursery decor and feeding equipment to name a few. As......
15 November, 2018No commentWe were invited to the Languages of London Festival at the Museum of London in Docklands over the weekend. The festival ran over both days – 3rd and 4th of November and we were fortunate to attend on the 3rd and even deliver a talk.......
05 November, 2018No comment
“Bilingualism can offer individuals a competitive edge in the job market and we’re seeing increasingly strong demand for the product as a result. We look forward to scaling up our presence in Europe and beyond in the coming months.” – Moiso, CEO and co-founder. Our sentiments......
02 November, 2018No comment
This weekend will be the Languages of London Festival at the Museum of London. It will be taking place this weekend on the 3rd and 4th November from 12pm – 4pm. There will be workshops such as Bengali Chana Chur Snack making and Chinese Calligraphy......
01 November, 2018No comment
Mandarin – the official language of China. Have you always wanted to explore the landscapes of China. Visit the picturesque wonder that is the Great Wall of China. Order an authentic Chinese meal, made with Chinese ingredients, by a Chinese chef and served to you......
11 October, 2018No comment
This month saw the much expected results of A level grades across the country. We remember the sense of dread in the build up to the day, the slow walk to the board which held your results for all to see, the panic at the......
30 August, 2018No commentNew Westminster Nursery – Nearly Open! As we’re nearing the completion of our Westminster nursery’s refurbishment and fit out, we wanted to forward on the 3D designs that our team have compiled to give you all a sense of what......
06 February, 2018No commentDid the Prime Minister sneak in hikes to visa application fees whilst away? Much fanfare about our Prime Minister’s trip to China but not about visas. Apparently £500m in educational deals were made, according to the Independent, including a £50m deal for John Woodward, the founder......
04 February, 2018No commentBilingualism to aid numeracy development? From Pisa scoring to numeracy skill sets, all current research and performance scales put Asian children far above their “Western” counterparts. But why? Discipline and hardwork? Maybe. But maybe the secret is to be found in language. The Oxford Handbook......
04 February, 2018No commentThe UK’s first bilingual Mandarin-English day nursery celebrates Good Ofsted rating with the launch of their second nursery in Twickenham, London Staff at Hatching Dragons, the UK’s first bilingual Mandarin-English nursery, are spreading their wings by opening their second nursery in London. The new nursery,......
10 July, 2017No commentNew Character Cards for Chinese New Year For the fully interactive pdf downloads, please click on the below links: Tiger; Snake; Sheep; Rooster; Rat; Ox; Monkey; Emperor; Horse; Dragon; Dog; Rabbit; Pig ...
23 January, 2017No commentChinese Nursery Learning Resources: 成语#1 Cheng Yu / 成语 (literally “set phrases”) are one of the most interesting parts of the Chinese language and one that we are making central to our chinese nursery learning resources. To the casual observer or new student to Chinese,......
19 January, 2017No commentIn a world that is increasingly moving towards a future in which China plays a more active role, how best can we prepare our children to engage with both the challenge and the opportunity such a change represents? We believe our bilingual nursery is part......
17 January, 2017No commentGood news for us here at Hatching Dragons, the UK’s first Bilingual Chinese Nursery. Just before Christmas we had our Local Authority, Islington, come along to our setting just North of the Barbican to assess how our bilingual early years approach works and whether it was......
17 January, 2017No comment
Why choose Hatching Dragons At Hatching Dragons, we believe there are many great reasons to choose us when you’re looking for a bilingual nursery in London. We are specialists when it comes to dual language acquisition and are waiting to hear from you today if......
06 December, 2016No comment
Why not consider Hatching Dragons if you have been looking online for a friendly nursery in Central London? Dual language acquisition offers significant benefits to your child and there is no need to worry about your child’s English suffering as a result of learning Mandarin. We......
06 December, 2016No comment
There are significant benefits attached to learning Mandarin, especially for children. Learning an extra language at a young age makes it easier to get to grips with other languages in the future, and being able to speak Mandarin can give your child a real edge......
06 December, 2016No comment
Your bilingual nursery in London Why not speak to Hatching Dragons today if you have been searching for a bilingual nursery in London? At Hatching Dragons, we help children to get to grips with Mandarin as well as English at any early age and are......
06 December, 2016No comment
Explore London’s leading bilingual nursery At Hatching Dragons, we’re widely regarded as London’s leading bilingual nursery. We are passionate about helping you give your child the finest start in life possible and providing them with skills that will benefit them for a lifetime. We are......
14 October, 2016No comment
Central London nursery Are you looking for a Central London nursery offering bilingual tuition? If so, help is available. At Hatching Dragons, we can cater for you if you require a bilingual nursery for your child. We specialise in helping young children get to grips......
06 October, 2016No comment
Helping children learning Mandarin If you’re looking for services that specialise in helping children learning Mandarin, help is at hand. Hatching Dragons is a bilingual nursery where kids are enabled to get to grips with Mandarin as well as English. There are many great reasons......
12 September, 2016No comment
Find an Anglo Mandarin nursery Do you need to find an Anglo Mandarin nursery? If so, help is at hand. At Hatching Dragons, we can help your child start to get grips with the Mandarin language from a very early age. There are many fantastic......
12 September, 2016No comment
The value of a bilingual nursery London There is no need to worry about your child become confused whilst attending a bilingual nursery London. At Hatching Dragons, we have seen children benefit remarkably from learning two languages and there is no evidence to suggest that......
12 September, 2016No comment
Find the best bilingual kindergarten London Take a look around www.hatching-dragons.com today if you need to find a leading bilingual kindergarten in London. At Hatching Dragons, we help young children enjoy dual language acquisition and enable them to get to grips with Mandarin as well......
12 September, 2016No commentThe Department of Education’s announcement today (see Gov.Uk) that they will be rolling out a new “Mandarin Excellence Programme” was met with a mixed response by the industry. £10m didn’t seem to be sufficient to affect real change on the ground back when we were......
10 September, 2016No commentHave you ever thought about the natural order of things? I stumbled upon this story the other day (thank you Matthew Anderson from the Beeb) about how us speakers of English have developed a natural order to the use of adjectives that, if broken, makes......
07 September, 2016No commentNew Consultation | Hatching Dragons As the Department for Education releases its public consultation on the new funding arrangements for early years providers, are we sure that £4.88 and hour is sufficient to meet the costs of delivering childcare and nursery in London? The Department......
11 August, 2016No commentChinese Valentine’s Day (七夕节 ) | Hatching Dragons For many of us, the 9th of August was just like any other day. But for millions of people throughout South East Asia and China, it is the day for romance, love and finding that longed for......
11 August, 2016No commentTax Free Childcare | Hatching Dragons As Donald Trump, Barak Obama and now Nicola Sturgeon bring childcare front and centre to their economic plans, is now the time to ask how we can change the UK’s policy on childcare for working parents to help with......
09 August, 2016No commentExports to China | Hatching Dragons Exports to China & Trade between China and the UK continued to grow all the way up through 2014…but what will the new Prime Minister’s position on China do to trade relations in the future? News that Theresa May......
08 August, 2016No commentBrexit British Values | Hatching Dragons The decision by the UK to leave the European Union on the 23th June this year was something I never thought would happen. Living in London, you couldn’t help but feel slightly buoyed by the fact that this City, clearly, stood......
30 July, 2016No commentBarbican Nursery | Hatching Dragons The wonders of technology in Early Years language learning Technology is a marvellous thing. It’s allowing you to read all about our fantastic bilingual day nursery in Islington from wherever you are in the world, it lets our hard-working Early Years specialists......
03 July, 2015No commentThousands of teenagers are facing an anxious wait over the next few weeks as their GCSE exam papers are marked and checked before the results are released in August. Such pressure is a long way off for our little Hatchlings, who are still settling in to......
30 June, 2015No commentScience is a fascinating subject in all its forms, from our little Hatchlings discovering the different properties of water and sand at our nursery in Islington, to researchers using the latest technology to find out how our brains work. And while the discoveries made by our young......
22 June, 2015No commentNurseries across London will be covered in even more glue and glitter than usual this week, as Father’s Day is just around the corner. Our little Hatchlings – and our staff – love any excuse to get creative, but how does it fit in with......
19 June, 2015No commentThe question of how we start nurturing bilingual children is a question that we think about quite a lot at Hatching Dragons. Some of our little Dragons – but by no means all – are exposed to more than one language at home, and their families......
18 March, 2015No commentWe may have mentioned it a few times (like here and here!) but we’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to the nursery learning environments of our first Mandarin Chinese/English bilingual day nursery in the heart of London. Our contractors are working away to make it......
09 March, 2015No commentIt’s been a great few weeks if you’re like us and love all things Chinese. First, there were the fantastic celebrations for the Chinese New Year, here in London and across the world as the Year of the Sheep officially began. And now Prince William is raising......
03 March, 2015No commentIf you’ve popped into one of our Hatching Dragons London playgroups or crèches, you’ll have heard our little dragons and their enthusiastic teachers singing their hearts out in Mandarin Chinese. It’s a fun thing to do, of course, and learning through play is one of the......
27 February, 2015No commentWe may have mentioned it a few times (like here and here!) but we’re rather keen on children learning languages. Ideally, we’d like Mandarin offered in schools up and down the country as more people realise what we know already, that China is playing an ever-increasing role......
18 February, 2015No commentPsychologists have long investigated how children learn language. And, as any student of psychology will know, studies of animal communication are also useful as a contrast. But research just published shows there may be more similarities than previously thought. Scientists at the University of York and the......
09 February, 2015No commentAs this year’s General Election looms, every word politicians utter is increasingly being pored over and analysed. One comment that has provoked much discussion was by Education Minister Nicky Morgan, who said in an interview that she tells her young son to go away and......
03 February, 2015No commentToday we held our third induction training day for our staff at Hatching Dragons, who are now really looking forward to putting into practice all the ideas we discussed when we launch our first nursery, close to the Barbican area, in the very near future. Today......
30 January, 2015No commentLisa Kane Our first guest blog is written by Lisa Kane, an expat who has taken up residence in Shanghai, working for the Western International School of Shanghai. Author of ‘A Whole New World of Colour’, a fantastic book inspired by her own storytelling activities......
30 January, 2015No commentBilingual Advantage | Hatching Dragons More students than ever before gradated with a first class degree last year, according to figures released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Their statistics showed that of 395,790 students who were awarded a degree last year, 79,440 gained a......
29 January, 2015No commentWould a duck raised by dogs quack or woof? It’s an interesting question, and one that yielded interesting results when researchers at Canada’s Concordia University posed it to pre-schoolers. Dr Krista Byers-Heinlein, from the Centre for Research in Human Development, and co-author Bianca Garcia, asked five and......
27 January, 2015No commentOur second induction training day for staff focused on the 3 prime and 4 specific areas of the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage), specifically looking at the early learning goals that were discussed last week. We paid special attention to how to best “immerse” our......
27 January, 2015No commentNo two days are ever the same at here at Hatching Dragons. Today I have been singing nursery rhymes in our office in Dalston, working with my colleague Jing Li to develop a new playgroup session, which we will be delivering in the Hackney Downs......
22 January, 2015No commentThe start to the New Year just gets better and better. Following all the excitement of planning the appearance of our first nursery, on the cusp of Islington South and the City, Hatching Dragons had the pleasure of welcoming our initial staff team to begin......
16 January, 2015No commentFirst thing first – a happy and prosperous New Year to all from us here at Hatching Dragons! We have bounced back into the year – surging forward with our plans for our first nursery, situated on the border of Islington and the City of......
07 January, 2015No commentIf the ability to speak Chinese and English isn’t enough to convince you, we thought we’d jot down the other advantages a bilingual upbringing will have for your child. Your child will become “smarter”. Yes that’s right – all the evidence now suggests that baby......
19 December, 2014No commentI read with interest Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s Three wishes for 2015 in Nursery World and it set me to thinking what would our wishes be here at Hatching Dragons? I have asked my colleagues in the office and the results are in, we did have......
18 December, 2014No commentWhen looking at our nursery concept and how learning a second language would benefit our little dragons, one question particularly intrigued us – how many people in this world are actually bilingual (or multilingual!)? Would learning a second language help them stand out from the......
15 December, 2014No commentHere at Hatching Dragons we are researching our approach to supporting young children as they acquire 2 languages, Mandarin and English. Children have an inherent drive to communicate, from the youngest baby who cries when they are hungry, tired or uncomfortable to the toddling 2......
12 December, 2014No commentWe recently heard the news that the one and only Eddie Izzard has been named the public’s Language Champion, an exciting initiative aimed at promoting the importance of language learning in the UK. The news was well received here at Hatching Dragons, where we firmly believe in......
09 December, 2014No comment