Experienced
With over 16 years of Childcare experience I decided to set up a family run nursery. Our skills and experience together provide a friendly, reliable and quality service to all our parents/carers and a fun, safe, secure, caring and educational experience for all our children.
No appointments
We have an open door policy, were no appointment is needed to view the nursery. We look forward to showing you around.
Create a warm, welcoming and safe environment, indoors and outdoors to which children feel valued as an individual and enjoy learning, where they can play, explore and follow their interests with planned purposeful play.
Offer a seasonal four weekly rotating menu of balanced and nutritional meals, which the children can all self-serve.
Follow the four themes of the EYFS. A unique child, Positive relationships, Enabling environments and Learning and development to facilitate effective practice and delivery of a high quality Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum.
Every child is assigned a key person. We aim to ensure that every child’s first experience of nursery is as happy as possible, promoting strong links with parents/carers by building up trust and partnerships.
Provide a broad and balanced curriculum which challenges the children’s learning and development according to their needs and interests, stages of development and reflects the multi-cultural nature of our society and promotes inclusion.
Ensure that all children are encouraged to investigate, predict, imagine and create through play, making choices, taking risks and participating in a range of both self and adult initiated activities.
Ensure parents and carers are given information regarding their child whilst in nursery and that their learning journey is shared to help them plan and support their children’s needs.
Meet all statutory safeguarding and welfare requirements to promote children’s well-being and ensure safe working practices are adhered to.
The development is encouraged and promoted for each individual child. The nursery works within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). Staff ratio in the Ladybird and Caterpillar Room is 1 member of staff to 4 children.
The children are encouraged to express themselves through a wide range of activities; therefore the children are developing social and emotional skills and independence. Activities are planned for each child, based on their specific needs and interests that the nursery practitioners have carried out through observations. Some activities are carried out on a 1-1 basis and at times can be carried out as a group activity.
The children follow a daily routine and have the opportunity to take part in both adult and child led initiated activities. A record of this is kept in each child’s learning journey.
The construction and small world area has a wide range of different resources to help the children develop their fine motor skills. The children enjoy pouring and measuring in the sand and water area – this is ideal for mathematical development.
The children have a wide variety of books to encourage their Communication and Language Development. The children enjoy singing and rhyming and also listening to the audio player and headphones.
In the Role Play area the children have an opportunity to dress up and enjoy imaginative play. The Mark Making and the Messy table are favourites with a lot of our children as they are able to draw, paint and make junk modelling or just be creative.
The children are able to play outdoors during the day, so we ask that you provide suitable clothing.
Toilet training is promoted within the nursery and once parents/carers feel that their child is ready to start this, they should let the staff know. The staff works really closely with parents to try and make the process of toilet training as easy as possible.
Having so much fun can be tiring for 2 year olds, so if they require a little rest or sleep, the children have their own individual sleep mat and blanket to enable to them have a nap.
Play becomes more investigative now with new activities being introduced such as mark making and looking at letters and numbers in our environment.
The key working system still continues in this room making the transition as smooth as possible. The development files are also continued in this room following the prime and specific areas of learning from the EYFS.
Three Prime Areas
- Communication and Language
- Physical
- Personal, Social and Emotional
Four Specific Areas
- Literacy
- Maths
- Understanding of the World
- Expressive Arts and Design
Your child’s new key worker will work alongside their previous key worker in the Ladybird and Caterpillar Room in order to determine each child’s stage of development and individual needs.
The staff ratio in the Bumble Bee Room is 1 qualified staff member to 8 children.
Forest School is a child-centred inspirational learning process, that offers opportunities for holistic growth through regular sessions. It is a long-term program that supports play, exploration and supported risk taking. It develops confidence and self-esteem through learner inspired, hands-on experiences in a natural setting.
Forest School has a developmental ethos shared by thousands of trained practitioners around the world, who are constantly developing their learning styles and skills to support new and imaginative learners. Its roots reach back to the open-air culture, or free air life, seen as a way of life in Scandinavia where Forest School began. It arrived in the UK in 1993 and has grown from strength to strength since then.
The process helps and facilitates more than knowledge-gathering, it helps learners develop socially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and intellectually. It creates a safe, non-judgemental nurturing environment for learners to try stuff out and take risks. Forest School inspires a deep and meaningful connection to the world and an understanding of how a learner fits within it. Our approach to risk means that learners constantly expand on their abilities by solving real-world issues, building self-belief and resilience. We believe that risk is more than just potential for physical harm, but a more holistic thing, there are risks in everything we do, and we grow by overcoming them. Forest School, therefore, helps participants to become, healthy, resilient, creative, and independent learners.
When we analyse children’s woodwork it is extraordinary to see how it encompasses all areas of learning and development and invites connections between the different areas. It embraces all the characteristics of effective learning and fosters confident, creative children with passion for life-long learning.
Children are empowered by being respected and trusted. They gain confidence and a sense of responsibility when allowed to work with real tools. As they master more tools and techniques, they take pride in accomplishing increasingly complex tasks. This imparts a can-do attitude and provides children with a strong sense of agency and a proactive disposition, as well as the belief that they have the power to help shape the world around them.
Hand-eye coordination is basic to woodwork and children gain increasing control over their bodies as they develop agility and dexterity, manipulative skills, and muscular strength. Woodwork incorporates fine motor skills (holding a nail, screwing) and gross motor skills (hammering, sawing). Children’s core strength is developed as they push/pull (sawing, filing), rotate (using a screwdriver, drill, wrench, vice), lever (using a claw hammer or Japanese nail puller) and rub (with sandpaper). Experience of using tools becomes part of children’s physical “vocabulary”. Children also learn self-care, for instance the importance of protecting their eyes with safety glasses.
Natural conversation occurs among adults and children in the woodwork area. Because wood can be used in countless ways, possibilities are thoroughly discussed. Children’s language of thinking evolves through experience. In the project development stage, children express ideas; dialogue ensues as they reflect and modify their plans. Adults introduce new vocabulary to enable children to discuss their work with greater clarity. Learning to use new tools builds attention skills; children learn to listen carefully in order to understand instructions.
Numeracy is basic to woodwork. Children measure pieces of wood; they experience shape and weight. Constructing three-dimensional forms develops their spatial awareness. Adults have ample opportunity to extend children’s mathematical understanding: having them estimate which is the best length nail to use, for example, or how long a piece of wood needs to be for a particular purpose. Many mathematical concepts are related: matching with classification; counting with measuring; comparison with weight and size. Children are fascinated to calculate a tree’s age by counting its rings in cross-section. Be sure to include a wide range of mathematical equipment in your woodworking area (rulers, tape-measures, set-squares, spirit levels).
Becoming familiar with trees and wood is part of making sense of the world. Trees are essential to life on our planet, and children are intrigued to learn about various kinds and about where and how they grow. Even young children begin to appreciate the interconnectedness of life and our dependence on oxygen released into the atmosphere by trees and other plants. If possible, take children into the woods to investigate a tree’s trunk, branches, leaves and roots. Planting a tree is a positive experience. Learning can branch out, for example by viewing leaves on a light box, examining different vein structures, making prints with leaves and learning about animals that live in trees. Talk about wood: what it is, where it comes from and its uses. Investigate wood as a material. What are its properties? It floats, it burns, it creates sawdust when cut, it gets hot when rubbed. Explorations can diversify – for instance, after wood is burned, it might be used to make charcoal drawings.
Woodwork’s greatest asset is its contribution to children’s creativity. When creating they become designers, architects and artists. I avoid set tasks such as having every child build a bird box, but rather encourage them to make whatever their interest suggests. This keeps enthusiasm and engagement high, and produces amazingly varied results, from hedgehogs or flying lampposts to superpower heli-planes.
Thinking creatively is a life skill that impacts on all areas of learning. It will help children develop innovative ideas and influence how they respond to opportunity and adversity, enabling them to see options and evaluate possibilities in the future.
Literacy is about expressing thought through writing. In woodwork, children express their ideas through creating, laying the mental foundation toward expressing themselves through the more abstract medium of the written word. There is also plenty of scope for mark-making, on the wood itself, on paper while developing design ideas, or writing about their work afterwards. Many good children’s books and stories relate to wood, carpentry, and forests, and can be linked to the woodworking area.
We offer a seasonal four weekly rotating menu of balanced and nutritional meals, which the children can all self-serve.
Before your child starts nursery we will discuss your child’s dietary needs, including any allergies they may have and appropriate arrangements will be made to meet individual needs. We also pay attention to dietary rules of religious groups and provide for vegetarians in appropriate ways. The children eat together in the rooms they are in during the day. The children are encouraged to wash their hands, use their manners and self-serve their own meals and drinks.
Meal and snack times are a great way to encourage the children to develop their own social and interaction skills. Some of the nursery practitioners choose to eat a nursery meal at a table with the children therefore encouraging conversation, turn taking, good manners and an overall understanding of healthy eating.
The nursery is fitted with CCTV for the safety and security of the children and staff.
The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Reforms will place a statutory requirement on settings from September 2014 to make information available to parents about how our setting supports children with SEND.
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Care at Little Tinkers Childcare Limited is provided by experienced and qualified staff. We recruit staff, not only on the basis of their experience, professionalism and qualifications but also for their personal qualities. We look for enthusiasm, dedication and a genuine love of children, and working with children.
OFSTED guidelines regarding the ratio of staff to children are strictly maintained at all times.
The nursery is committed to the ongoing training and development of staff and will undertake a full on-going training programme to ensure that our staff are kept up to date with training and information provided by the relevant outside agencies. All our staff have Paediatric First Aid Training, and under gone Safeguarding Children Training Course.
Owner since July 2007
Proprietor/Nursery Manager
Cache Diploma Level 3 in Childcare and Education
Foundation Degree in Working with Children and Young People
BA Honours Degree Level 6 in Working with Children and Young People
Safer Recruit Trained
Designated Safeguarding Officer
Nursery SENCO PICO .
Paediatric First Aid Trained
Forest School Leader Level 3 - Currently completing
Outdoor First Aid Trained
Level 2 Safeguarding
Cache Level 2 in Autism Awareness
FEE Funded Hours
We provide the 30 hour funded hours for 3 to 4 year olds.
We provide the 15 funded hours for 2,3 and 4 year olds
We are open 7.30am-6pm Monday – Friday for 51 weeks of the year. We close for one week at Christmas, in addition to Bank Holidays. We close at 1pm Christmas Eve.
Fees are payable in advance, on the 1st day of each calendar month, usually by standing order.
The setting has been approved to provide ‘Free Flexible Entitlement’ funding for 3 and 4 year old children. What this means is that from the term following your child’s third birthday, they will receive up to a maximum of 15 hours free childcare per week for 38 weeks of the year, based around term time.
We accept a range of childcare vouchers including Kiddivouchers, Computershare and Sodexho.
Holidays and Sickness are payable in full.
A registration fee of £50 is required when reserving a place. This is credited to the initial standing order calculation. Deposits are non-refundable if the reserved place is cancelled.
Nursery fees are reviewed every April.
How do I reserve a place for my child?
If you have not viewed our nursery, please do not hesitate to come and have a look. Little Tinkers has an “open door policy” where no appointment is needed to view the nursery. We just kindly ask that you visit us between the hours of 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm.
If you have been to see our nursery, you would have been given a ‘Registration Form’, simply complete the form and return it to us with your registration fee, alongside a copy of your child’s birth certificate. Upon receiving your completed form we will contact you to discuss your childcare requirements and settling in sessions for your children.
