kindergarten (n.)

c. 1200, from Old English cynn "family; race; kind, sort, rank; nature" (also "gender, sex," a sense obsolete since Middle English), from Proto-Germanic *kunja- "family" (source also of Old Frisian kenn, Old Saxon kunni "kin, kind, race, tribe," Old Norse kyn, Old High German chunni "kin, race;" Danish kjön, Swedish kön, Middle Dutch, Dutch kunne "sex, gender;" Gothic kuni "family, race," Old Norse kundr "son," German Kind "child"), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.

In the Teutonic word, as in Latin genus and Greek [ genos], three main senses appear, (1) race or stock, (2) class or kind, (3) gender or sex .... [OED]

Related to both words kind and to child. From 1590s as an adjective, from the noun and as a shortening of akin. Legal next of kin (1540s) does not include the widow, "she being specifically provided for by the law as widow" [Century Dictionary], and must be a blood relation of the deceased.

c. 1300, noricerie, "place or room for infants and young children and their nurse," from Old French norture, norreture "food, nourishment; education, training," from Late Latin nutritia "a nursing, suckling," from Latin nutrire "to nourish, suckle" (see nourish). From c. 1500 as "place where anything is fostered." As a type of school for very young children, 1580s. The horticultural sense of "place where trees are raised to be transplanted" is from 1560s. Nursery rhyme is by 1807.