Clarendon Cottage Pre-school Page 4.

If you wanted your baby to attend the nursery, we would ask you to come in on a pre- start visit a week or so before your baby was due start. You would meet with with the senior staff and discuss where your child is up to with their feeding, how frequently your baby has feeds, if you have introduced solids and how your child is doing with that. Your baby's routine that you have established at home will be continued at nursery, so we will feed your baby at the time he or she would be due to be fed, rather than a time which would be convenient for us. We will make all the feeds up for your baby at nursery and we would just ask that you bring in a jar of your chosen formula milk. We have strict environmental health guidelines that we comply with; we log down when a new jar is opened so we can mix it and use it within the right period of time and we make sure it's correctly labelled up and kept in the food room. This room is just used for dealing with the baby meals within the baby group. We have all the different shaped teats and bottles, and the same shaped teat you use at home will be used at nursery. The bottles will be sterilised in our steam sterilisers. The feeds are made up fresh each day, cooled down as quickly as possible, labelled up with the child's name and placed into the refrigerator, which is there solely for the storage of the baby foods - no other foodstuffs are kept in this fridge. We only ever use bottle warmers to warm our feeds, never a microwave oven. With solid food - when your baby is due to be introduced to solids, if you choose, you can use our baby foods. If you prefer, you can bring in your own baby food - perhaps you may be cooking your own vegetables for your baby. If you choose to bring in your own meals then they will be labelled up, placed in the fridge and prepared at the appropriate time for your baby. Most of the babies tend to progress to a blended down nursery lunch by the age of about 7 to 9 months. When the babies are on nursery meals there is the choice of the standard meal or a vegetarian option each day. Special dietary requirements, if medical or religious, are also catered for. All the food provided is wholesome and prepared and cooked fresh each day by our kitchen staff. The nursery playroom is provided with cots, so that babies can be placed down for a sleep as and when they require. Each time a baby wakes up from a sleep, the cot is stripped and fresh bedding is put down; so there are always fresh clean sheets for each of the babies. Again we would discuss with you on the pre-start visit if there was a set time that you would like your baby to sleep, whether you would prefer us to put baby down in the cot whilst they were awake, rock them off to sleep and then put them down – again as with the feeding, the routines and ways of getting them to sleep that had been established at home would be continued within the nursery. We keep a little daily diary for each of the babies, we don’t write what we have been doing with the babies all day, as we would spend our day writing in the book rather than playing with the babies. But we do log down any feeds and solid meals that they may have taken as well as; the times, ounces of milk and how they have done with their food. We also write down all the sleeps that they have that day and the length of time that they have slept for. We log down all wet and soiled nappies, which is particularly important with the young babies who we may be introducing to new textures, new foods – we want to keep a check that nothing is upsetting their tummies. The diary goes home with you each day, which is useful if you suddenly think of something that you need to let us know about, you can jot it down in the book because we always check the diary each morning for any messages from you.

The Beavers baby group is situation in the new unit, which was purpose built in the rear of the grounds in 2001. In this room there is a large amount of floor space – we have lovely green, cushioned mats for the babies to sit on, so that it's a little softer than just sitting on the carpet. We have different sized play rings for the babies and they are full of sound making patches, toys, bells and buzzers, we fill the big play rings, with balls, or sound making toys, or perhaps it might be with soft teddy bears; so that the babies who are in there can’t help but find something interesting as they move around to play with. We can also split the smaller play rings into two halves which can help the younger babies with sitting or perhaps encourage two babies to interact and perhaps play a little. With the younger babies there is plenty of one-to-one interaction with the staff, lots of cuddles, and singing, and activities to encourage babies to be vocal and to get them to focus on things, making them aware of their surroundings and encouraging their physical skills as well. After babies get to the stage where they can sit more independently, we have little low chairs with trays in which they can sit and we start to let them dabble with some different nursery activities. For example, we may put paint on the tray and let them finger paint, splash around in the indoor water, have cornflour gloop on the tray, or play dough and just let the babies begin to experience the different types of play that can be enjoyed within the nursery setting. For the older children in this group we have a carosel of activities: There is always a messy activity of some form; painting, you name it we’ll paint with it, bubble painting, hand or foot painting, string painting or collage work. There is lots of gluing and lots of different texture activities for them to touch and feel, staff are there to encourage this and talk about what colour it is and how it feels. At this stage, it purely is matter of experiencing these things, end products aren’t important, if there is something, that’s great, but really it’s just letting the babies discover and experiment with as many different types of medium as we can. We also have set up a little role play area, where we can start to encourage the babies to do imitation play, like; bathing or feeding the dollies, have a picnic, go shopping, wash hair, put rollers in, play hairdresser etc. and just start to get them to interact with each other a little bit more. There is always some floor play out because at this age they are still very much floor orientated; we might get the big soft blocks out, the big puzzle, the big train track, the big building blocks, so that the babies can build and knock things down. The babies are free to move from one activity to another - there is always a member of staff present in each area to encourage them to play and to have a go at all the things that are set out. We introduce them to the idea of singing with lots of action rhyme because the language may not yet be present, also the idea of music - we get our percussion instruments out and we make a lovely band. We encourage the idea of listening to stories, we do read story books on a one-to- one basis and also encourage some of the older babies to sit as a little group, only for a very short space of time, where we might encourage them to listen to a story, talk and point to the things in the pictures.

We have a wonderful outside play area that was completed in 2011 that comprises shelters, a swiss chalet, water and sand play features and much more. We also have a in/out conservatory area with its open sandpit so we can dig when the weather is not so great. For the babies who are not mobile, when it is warm, we take the mats and play rings out and they can sit and play outside, if that is not possible, then we put the hats and coats on the babies who are not yet walking and staff will carry them around outside helping them to explore the new environment as well as getting some fresh air. For the babies who are toddling we have push along toys, sit-and-ride trikes, balls etc. and we do encourage the children outside to play on a daily basis if possible. Unlike some other nurseries, the babies only ever remain in the grounds of the nursery and we never take the babies off the nursery site. When we feel it is time that a baby are ready to make the move up to the next baby group then we discuss that with the parents. We always wait until we have a few babies to move together so that they are moving with friends and not on their own. Also for a few weeks before the babies actually move, some members of staff currently working in the Badgers group will come and work in the Beavers group, and in that way the babies and the parents get to know the members of staff so that when the move happens the transition is very smooth. Parents often find it reassuring to keep in touch to see how their child is settling. Parents are welcome to telephone as many times through the day as they wish and your call will be transferred through to the new unit and you can speak directly to the member of staff caring for your baby and they will let you know exactly how he or she has been. There is always someone at hand to discuss any aspect of your baby's routine or care.