Nursery
The Nursery Room
The nursery room is a calm and tranquil environment where babies and toddlers thrive with the caring and loving approach provided by key people. The room has a maximum number of 12 children which gives a family-friendly feel and is suitable for babies from 3 months to toddlers and children aged up to 2 ½ to 3 years.
Snacks and meals take place around the table where everyone babies, toddlers, and practitioners sit together to enjoy the routine together. The routines are flexible to allow staff to support all children’s individual needs and we have safe and suitable areas for sleeping, nappy changing, playing, and learning. We provide a wide range of activities designed to interest and stimulate, including sticking, messy painting sessions, other creative activities, sand and water play, and story sessions. The song box sessions are delightful and even our youngest babies join in with these with fascination and interest. There is also lots of individual learning in the form of role-play and free play, which staff support sensitively. We go outside every session, either to play in the school playground and/or for a walk around our beautiful Buxton town.
Our key person approach means that practitioners get to know their babies and children, they will work closely with parents and carers and plan activities to reflect their interests and needs.
Activities are planned in accordance with the Early Years Foundation Stage and the seven areas of learning which are; Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language, Physical Development, Mathematical Development, Literacy, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design.
Famly and the Care Diary
We use Famly an online learning journey system to document our babies and toddlers’ time at the nursery. We share photographs and videos with a description of what we have been doing with links to the Early Years Foundation Stage and Characteristics of Effective Learning.
There is a care diary function on famly which we use to record important information for parents and carers including snack and mealtime information, bottle times, sleep times and also nappy change details. One of our favourite things about the famly system is that parents and carers can add stories from home too.
Partnership with Parents
We work very closely with parents and carers. When parents register their children we ask for lots of information so we can best support the children during their time at nursery. Key people will spend time with parents during settling in session to allow parents to share things they feel are important. Conversations take place at the beginning of every session every day to share important news and appointments can be arranged to allow more time to talk as required. We hold at least 2 parents evenings throughout the year to discuss children’s progress.
“The nursery room is a calm and tranquil environment where babies and toddlers thrive with the caring and loving approach provided by key people”
2 year health check
We are required by law to contribute to the 2 year health check process. This means that key people will complete a report around a child’s 2nd birthday. This process be shared with parents and they will be asked to contribute.
Trips out and about
Our nursery room get out and about as much as they possibly can – they regularly enjoy walks to the park, the library and also take part in different seasonal outdoor opportunities such as collecting conkers during Autumn or visits to the fabulous Wells Dressings during the Summer term. We have a nursery minibus and this is used during many of our trips out and about.