No one knows your child better than you, so our partnership with parents is integral to our way of working. We hold termly parents’ meetings ensuring you have the time to discuss your child’s individual needs and progress with their appointed key person. However, our ‘open-door’ policy means that parents are welcome to come and speak to us at any time. We promote home learning, and encourage parents to participate and contribute to their child’s development, sharing information on a daily basis.
Our older children are encouraged to construct and make their own ‘Chatter Box’ at home by collecting a few of their favourite items and placing them in a shoe box or something similar in shape and size. The box is decorated at home with the parent or carer and then brought into the nursery.
In small groups, with their Key Person, children are encouraged to share the contents of their ‘Chatter Box’ with their peers. This activity is always undertaken in small groups to allow each child in the group a turn to discuss a few of their items. All children will be given the chance to ask questions and participate in conversations within the group.
Taking part in ‘Chatter Box’ time will encourages children to listen to their peers which helps develop their attention and concentration skills.
The vocabulary a child uses when describing their special items will extend to reflect the breadth of their experiences. This activity also enables children to organise, sequence and clarify their thinking, ideas, feelings and events. Children will be encouraged to express themselves, whilst showing awareness of the group’s listeners and needs, whilst using past, present and future forms of language.
Our ‘Chatter Boxes’ encourage and enable the older children to speak confidently in a friendly and secure situation, whilst initiating conversations and forming good relationships with others. These are all skills which are required for school readiness and which will help to ensure a smooth transition for your child when they start their Reception year.
Children today, have an ever-growing curiosity about the outside world, where foods come from and how they grow. Garden Champions is our own bespoke gardening activity. This activity extends children’s knowledge of the outdoor environment, habitats, caring for living things, growth cycles and growing vegetation outdoors. Our Garden Champion activities are an effective method of harnessing our children’s curiosity in this area and shaping their understanding of the world around them.
Our nursery has a nominated ‘Garden Champion’ who attends regular training sessions to further develop their own knowledge and skills, enabling them to bring back to nursery, a range of seasonal activities which can be carried out with the children. This is not simply an activity of planting grass seeds in a pot, but is in fact an opportunity for children to make use of real-life gardening tools and equipment to prepare an area, sow seeds, tend to vegetation and harvest their produce at the end of the process. The use of these tools further extends the children’s knowledge and understanding of how to manage their own risk, handle tools carefully, and keep themselves safe in an outdoor environment. Our children always complete their own visual risk assessment of the area, with the support of a practitioner, and decide for themselves if it is an appropriate and safe time to complete their activity. If the children decide it is not, they will then discuss what can be done to make it so.
Aside from developing knowledge of plant life and what is needed to promote healthy growth of their garden, our children also gain an understanding of agriculture, farming and the food chain, through a wide range of extension opportunities, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Fruits and vegetables grown are picked and prepared by the children, alongside the nursery chef, who will then factor them into the menu for that day. This provides children with the ‘garden to plate’ experience, a fundamental aspect of supporting them in being able to make informed choices about the foods they put into their bodies.
Our nursery is registered with the Royal Horticultural Society and has achieved their RHS accreditation.
Ladybird Day Nursery is situated in a beautiful converted Victorian house in the centre of the picturesque village of Fenstanton in Cambridgeshire.