Our Nursery
Diverse Learning Environments
Converted to a high standard, our spacious building is located in a built up residential area that houses large outdoor grounds, including our own forest garden and vegetable and herb growing allotment.
Our nursery offers something for every child as there are dedicated playrooms for different age groups including a specialist area for babies, open plan toddler rooms and a large flexible space for preschool. We also are lucky to have a dedicated sensory room.
We also use a dedicated separate building with secure outside spaces to offer care for children up to the age of 12 years through our before and after school sessions and Holiday clubs.
Babies
Our baby room ‘Tiny Giraffes’ is for our youngest children. Our emphasis in the baby room is to provide love, warmth and security in a stimulating environment.
Our carefully selected practitioners, experienced in caring for babies, and with a staffing ratio of 1:3 deliver the best quality care and provide rich experiences for your baby daily. Babies are provided with a range of fun activities, exploration, messy play and rich sensory experiences and our room supports children to extend their learning within the three prime areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage. This age group also have access to our own outdoor toddler area, as well as our forest garden which they love and is very popular. These areas enhance their physical abilities as well as providing them with more opportunities to experience the outside world. As well as being nurtured with lots of love and stimulation.
From day one we build up good relationships with you as parents, and we are committed to working with you. Each child is given their own key worker, whom both you and your child will get to know well and form a bond. This supports us in continuing your babies current care routine which is our upmost importance, and as the babies become more active, the routine is adapted to meet their developing needs.
Toddlers
Our toddler room ‘Little Giraffes’ is for our 2-3 year olds. Our emphasis in the toddler room is to continue to provide love, warmth and security in a stimulating environment.
We provide your child with plentiful opportunities to explore and to have many experiences. Children are encouraged to participate in numerous different planned and spontaneous activities, messy activities, quiet time such as stories and singing, and they are free to explore and investigate at every opportunity.
We extend and encourage language, new words and vocabulary and also focus on forming friendships and supporting children how to play. Your child will also have continuous opportunity for outdoor learning, as our room has their own special outdoor space providing opportunity for free flow.
We follow our children’s interests and share home experiences to contribute to this, along with the Early Years Foundation Stage. All of our learning is play based, and our knowledgeable practitioners support and extend children’s learning sensitively to further develop your child’s knowledge and understanding. This is evident in our planning and child-led activities we carry out daily. If they still wish to do so, children can sleep in a restful environment after their lunchtime meal.
Preschool
Our preschool room ‘Big Giraffes’ is for our 3-5 year olds. Our preschool is designed to deliver a welcoming, stimulating and fun environment for children to learn and develop in before their transition into school.
Continuing our child-led initiated, play based approach to learning from the toddler room we additionally provide extra opportunities and experiences. We focus greatly on independence and learning new skills, following the children’s interests and also delivering many additional experiences. We provide opportunity’s such as P.E sessions, Yoga, Dough Disco, Forest garden sessions and access the local community for outings. We feel that all of this contributes to provide rich learning in all areas in accordance to the Early Years Foundation Stage.
Over all we also provide children not only with independence and learning new skills, but to become confident, make their own choices, develop friendships and manage their own risks.
Your child will continue to also have opportunity to access the outdoors, to continue outdoor learning as our preschool have free flow access into two garden areas and our forest garden.
Outside Spaces
We are very lucky to have good outdoor spaces at our nursery. We have our toddler garden, main garden and forest garden, plus our front garden with an emphasis on continuous provision from our preschool and our own allotment area.
Our children use the outdoor areas daily, and both our toddler room and preschool have the opportunity for free flow as the gardens lead directly off from their rooms.
Our vision on outdoor learning here at Blue Giraffe is that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. Therefore we do ask you bring in waterproofs, all in ones and wellington boots for your children.
We believe that children flourish whilst engaging with the outdoors, and outdoor learning is a big part of what we deliver here at Blue Giraffe. Our garden areas provide children with exciting opportunities, to experience building upon new skills and challenges and comply with the Early Years Foundation Stage.
