Little Learners Inverness
“I kind of realised if you want something in life, or if there’s something you want to do and you’re scared, it’s going to sound cheesy, but you only get one shot, you only get one life, so you need to just do it.” – Kelly
Please give a warm welcome to Kelly, our new franchisee, who is joining the Little Learners team this September! Kelly is the owner of the new Little Learners Inverness. Soon, she will be running our iconic mark-making and messy play classes, parties, and events. Originally from
Washington, Tyne & Wear, Kelly has spent the last 20 years building a life for herself in Inverness. Now living there with her husband and two young daughters, Kelly feels ready to bring all the fun of messy play to Scotland!
What inspired you to become a franchisee with Little Learners?
Kelly has always wanted a career that she loves, rejecting the idea of a 9-5 that she will end up hating. For so long, she “had no idea” what she wanted to do. But, when Kelly had her oldest daughter, she started working in childcare and immediately fell in love!
After gaining more freedom to work once her oldest daughter had started school, Kelly’s second daughter was born. She thought “I’m right back at the beginning” again. Kelly knew that she wanted to continue working in childcare, but could only do relief work due to her availability. There had been many obstacles in Kelly’s career search, and she tells us that she was yet to find something that made her think, “yes, this is where I want to be for the rest of my life.”
Although Kelly labelled herself “not much of a risk-taker,” as she has gotten older, she has realised “if you want something in life, or if there’s something you want to do and you’re scared, it’s going to sound cheesy, but you only get one shot, you only get one life, so you need to just do it.” Kelly wants to teach her girls “that it’s okay to be scared of something, but if you really want something, you need to go out and get it!” This is when she began to consider franchising, marking her first step into an exciting, new chapter!
Kelly explains the franchise is “like a way of having my own kind of baby, my own business, and something I can call my own, but not have to do it on my own.” She felt that she didn’t have enough experience to start fully from scratch, but with Little Learners she could grow something to be proud of, something that would allow her to work and still spend invaluable time with her daughters. When her daughters grow up, she hopes to tell them about this risk that she took. Even if it didn’t work out, Kelly says: “I’d be glad I tried.”
Kelly concludes,“I just wanted to do something that I can be proud of, and that I can call my own, and that I can work at, and build, and hopefully do well at, and be able to teach my children that it’s okay to take risks, you need to, it’s okay to go for what you’re after, don’t be scared.”
Why Little Learners?
It wasn’t only Little Learners that Kelly considered franchising with, for there were other playgroups that had caught her eye. However, when she researched Little Learners and read about our focus on messy play as a tool for children to learn and develop, she decided we were the perfect fit for her! Kelly expressed her love for all things messy play. Getting messy is one of her “favourite things about working with kids!”
What really attracted her attention was how our classes use messy play and mark-making to develop crucial early literacy skills because Kelly, herself, writes stories. She has loved writing “from a young age” and “it’s one of [her] life goals to get a book published.” It was the combination of education, literacy, and messy play that ultimately convinced her to join us. Kelly explained, “Again, it’s going to sound really cheesy, but it came to me at the right time. It was like fate, I don’t know if you believe in that sort of thing, but that’s kind of how it felt. I was like, I feel like I’m supposed to do this.”
What was life before Little Learners Inverness?
Kelly was an early years relief practitioner, stating she is currently still on “the relief list with the Highland Council.” She describes going around nurseries in the Highlands for relief work. Kelly says, “I’ve managed to go to lots of different nurseries, lots of different settings, met lots of different people, learned different ways people in settings are doing things, and I also have a relief position with a private nursery.”
Originally, her relief work was to fit around her daughters before she could get a job that she could work more permanently. Things haven’t worked out exactly as she had expected, but she tells us, “that’s okay!”
Kelly worked with CALA (Care and Learning Alliance) in Inverness in April 2022. It was one of her first childcare jobs. From there, she has had a couple of part-time nursery positions. She says, “I’ve done a lot of relief work, so I’ve managed to, like I say, go around lots of different nurseries and meet lots of different children and lots of different families. I’ve worked with children with learning needs and autism. I did one-to-one with a little one when I was at one of my nurseries, so, yes, challenging, but it was a good experience.”
Through this work, Kelly describes how she has “managed to gain a lot of confidence and experience with my parents and working with the children and dealing with behavioural issues and things like that, I’ve managed to build up all my experience and skills, so it’s been brilliant.”
With these experiences behind her, she hopes to lead her new classes with an open mind and confidence in her abilities.
Tell us about Inverness?
Although originally from the North East, Kelly has lived so long in Inverness that she calls it “her home.” Inverness is the fast-growing capital of the Highlands, and Kelly describes how, after living there so long, you begin to take for granted how beautiful it is. She recalls walking along the canal next to her house one day and admiring all of the views: the fields, the hills, the mountains. She remembers thinking to herself, after stopping to take it all in, “it’s actually really beautiful here.” The people are lovely, too, she adds!
Inverness is the best of both worlds for Kelly. On the one hand, you’ve got your city life, with your shops, restaurants, and pubs. On the other hand, Kelly describes a “massive stretch of canal” and lists off the “woods and forests and a quick drive to nowhere”. When you live in a city or the countryside, that is all you have for miles. But in Inverness, both live on the cusp of each other, an escape into nature is only a short distance away from the bustling streets. Kelly tells us one of her many favourite things about Inverness is this escape, that “if you just want to escape and not be around anyone, you don’t have to go too far.” I think we could all benefit from that every once in a while!
It is the little ones that make it all worthwhile for Kelly. They are “kind of our future, aren’t they?” Kelly says. She laughs as she explains that she “likes the idea of helping to shape little brains to make future people that are going to, maybe, run the country and all that sort of stuff!”
One of her favourite things about working with kids, and part of what fuels her passion for early years education, is how kids “don’t judge you, they don’t care, and they’re silly,and they laugh, and they joke, and they just want to play, and they’re so innocent, and it brings you back.” Kelly explains that when she goes to work in childcare it, in some ways, brings her back to being a child again.
As adults, we have so many responsibilities and stresses, but “kids they just have fun, don’t they?” Kelly goes on. Working in early years education reminds Kelly that “this is what life is about really,” to have “fun and to be silly and to not be so serious.”
Kelly speaks about her anxiety and how it is getting better over time, but she is looking forward to putting herself out there and testing what her limits are. “If you had said 10 years ago that I’m going to be running a children’s class, I would have been like, no way, I couldn’t do that!” But now, Kelly is ready to begin this new chapter with Little Learners and get “stuck in.”
It is “going to be hard, and I’m looking forward to that aspect of it as well,” Kelly says. She is excited at the prospect of “putting a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of passion into something and then seeing what I get out of it and seeing it grow!”
Want to book a messy play class with Kelly in Inverness? Click HERE!
