Nursery Rooms

Our Day Nursery follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (statutory guidance implemented throughout the setting) and Development Matters, which is non-statutory curriculum guidance to support.

There are seven key features of effective practice:

The best for every child
High-quality care
The curriculum – what we want the children to learn
Pedagogy - the theory for teaching children
Assessment: checking what children have learnt
Self-regulation and executive function
Partnership with parents

In planning and guiding what children learn, our team will reflect on the Characteristics of Effect Learning, which are:

Playing and Exploring
Active Learning
Creating and Thinking Critically

There are the seven areas in which use to plan and develop our activities:

Communication and Language development
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Physical Development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding the World
Expressive Arts and Design

In addition to the above specific requirements for the operation of Our Day Nursery, we also feel it is important to encourage participation from parents and carers. Therefore, representatives are chosen from each room to form our Parent Nursery Association. Each room also has a mascot, which is taken home weekly by one of the nursery children, allowing them to communicate the adventures of the mascot each week in our mascot diary, supporting parent partnership.

Outdoor Area

Our unique location enables us to provide children at the nursery with a safe, secure outdoor area to which they all have access as part of their routines. It is designed to provide intriguing, engaging, and suitable elements for each stage of their development. There is a quiet space to read and be read to, a planting area where the children will grow flowers and vegetables, and play equipment to challenge their growing physical capabilities. Spending time outside in nature feeds their curiosity. It opens their eyes to the natural world - the changing seasons, growth and the creatures they’ll find - which all expand their knowledge and develop their sense of caring for our planet.

Baby Room

Ages: 6-18 months

Capacity: 12 children & 4 team members

The Baby Room is designed to replicate a home-from-home environment, ensuring the children and families feel welcome, safe, secure, and happy. The furniture and play equipment has been hand-picked for this room from Community Playthings, one of the leading providers of nursery furniture and equipment, whose motto is ‘Children come first’.

The room layout has separate yet interlinking areas where the children can play with resources designed to support, enhance and further their learning. These areas include:

A separate cot room
Home corner
Messy play
Reading
Construction
Small world
Sensory and physical play areas

The team members design daily routines where they plan in the moment to create invitations to learn that are based upon the children’s interests and also encourage continuous learning.

The babies have access to their own separate garden which is fully equipped in order to encourage them to explore using all of their senses and making use of the natural resources around them. The babies have a water wall as well as a mud kitchen which supports them to discover, create and explore. The babies also have access to a calm space outdoors that is undercover; this is complete with books, song prop bags and soft furnishings so that the children can spend time relaxing in a tranquil outdoor space too.

Transition Room

Ages: 18 months to 2 years

Capacity: 6 children & 2 team members

We added the Transition Room simply because we believe children of this age are experiencing an essential transitional stage as they develop into a more conscious sense of self. The main changes within this room are that children transition to sleeping on floor mats within the room and also that they begin to access the bigger back garden, including the trikes and climbing/large art areas.

The room is designed to include all elements of our Baby Room with adaptions to support the abilities of this age range and allow for increased autonomy.

The benefits of a smaller room capacity allows the focus to be placed on this transitional stage, which we feel is critical for children of this age. From experience, this approach greatly assists with moving into the Toddler Room and parents have fed back that it supports children in developing their communication and social skills hugely which is a great foundation for moving into the busier toddler room.

Toddler Room

Ages: 2-3 years

Capacity: 20 children & 5 team members

The world is now a much more exciting place for our toddlers, so it is important for this room to support their growing minds and need for exploration. We have created a fun and dynamic space, spread over 3 rooms that are full of resources that challenge and encourage investigative play.

The room layout features separate play areas focused on the 7 areas of learning within the EYFS that allows for the children to freely play in the space of their choosing. The children have regular access to our outdoor play area, which includes equipment designed to challenge their physical capabilities and spark their imaginations. In our garden, we also have retained a substantial outhouse, which lends itself perfectly to an outdoor classroom (due for completion early 2025).

Children love being outside in nature and experiencing the seasons change and our outdoor area containing a potion station, play-dough table and loose parts kitchen encourage exactly this. Children are given opportunities to get involved in planting seasonal produce, hunt for bugs as well as observing other wildlife within our abundant outdoor environment.

Preschool Room

Ages: 3-5 years

Capacity: 20 children & 3 team members

School readiness is one of the key focuses of our Preschool Room; the journey through Baby, Transition and Toddler Rooms has prepared the children for a more structured day. Here we start to incorporate learning time on the carpet as well as focused activities that include phonics, letter formation, reading and numbers, with the aim of each child having been exposed to these areas before leaving us to start in reception.

The room has been carefully designed with an armchair, carpet and lamp for carpet time, this is in order to continue providing a home from home experience for our children. There is designated table and chair space for focused learning alongside floor and creative activity spaces that are available for children to access at all times.

These areas include (but are not limited to);

Messy play using a range of materials.
Role play areas with items to allow for imagination to flow.
A reading area that allows space for quiet time and storytelling.
A writing area for the children to be able to explore and practice their handwriting skills.
Construction and Small World area designed for children to be able to develop each other’s play.
Mathematics area where children will be able to practise problem-solving tasks

The Preschool Room is the last phase of their journey with us, and we want each child to feel confident moving on to the next chapter so we focus on supporting children to develop their social skills, playing collaboratively in pairs or small groups in order to build their confidence. We work on children developing their self-care skills; for example putting on their own socks and shoes or hanging up their belongings and always encourage encourage them to carry out daily tasks as independently as they can. As always, we nurture the development of these skills through provision of open ended, child led invitations to play that are based on the children’s individual interests.