I bought a 4k camera to take a video of everything in the shop at once so I wouldn't have to move my camera around. Then I thought I could go in with the editor create a standard HD window and just move that window to where the actions taking place.so rather than film in standard HD and then stop move the camera film again stop moving the camera film again I could just film the entire workshop and capture what I wanted action wise in the editing window. Is this a thing? Does it have a name that I can refer to in the future for questions? And most importantly is it possible to do this in KDEnlive

Yes, this is possible in Kdenlive. Set the project to fullHD (the final size of your video). Add the effect “transform” on you 4K clip and adjust to FullHD and move it to the place in the clip you want to show.