Little Barn Owls Day Nursery in Horsham

Our Vision, Ethos & Beliefs

Nurturing Confident, Caring and Curious children is what we do.

At Little Barn Owls Day Nursery we consider every 'little person' to be a beautiful, independent, fascinating, creative individual with a huge amount to offer the world. At Little Barn Owls we understand that the importance of the early years in a child's general development cannot be over-emphasised. Any experience which caters for the needs of the children, before they reach statutory school age, establishes the foundations of future learning in many areas of human experience. There are four main needs of a child in the pre-school years:

• The need for love and security
• The need for new experiences
• The need for praise and recognition
• The need for a framework of responsible behaviour

Our Beliefs

• We believe young children are capable of reaching higher levels of learning earlier than some expect.
• We are passionate about helping them to develop their moral compass and encouraging them to become self-respecting, confident and social individuals.
• We believe that excellent nursery education helps very young learners to become stimulated and excited by the fun of learning through play, which supports a positive life-long attitude to learning and succeeding.
• We believe we can serve our children best through a firm commitment to regular self-assessment, training and research.
• We believe by investing in our staff and praising, rewarding and incentivising them we will continue to build a committed, happy and overall effective team.

Our vision for the future

The immediate vision of Little Barn Owls is of developing a small group of nurseries each with an Outstanding Ofsted report, reflected by the high standards of child-led learning and nurturing environment. The nurseries are rich with a multitude of interesting learning and playing workshop areas both inside and out, and staffed by self-motivated, valued and passionate early years educators, that know how to implement the very best practise that good research and training can teach them. These practises across all areas of their work are underpinned by a notion of encouraging consistent independence and free choice, not only through how children choose to play and learn, but in the resources and experiences available to them. The intention is for every child to reach their full potential for learning and fun in their early years, and to develop a love of learning and good citizenship. We commit to nurture Confident, Caring and Curious life-long learners with a strong moral compass in place. Safety and well-being of the children in the nursery is of equal importance to their learning and enjoyment, and it is our aim to exceed the minimum legal statutory requirements of childcare staff ratios.

Hayley Peacock Owner and Director of Education

Letter from our Owner

Dear Parents

Hello, I'm Hayley, the Owner of Little Barn Owls Day Nurseries. Thank you for taking the time to read our website, I hope to get the chance to meet you personally, show you around and show off our fabulous family of staff and children. I thought in the meantime you may be interested in a bit of the background to LBO and where we came from?

I come from a business and media background, having worked in television and radio production and broadcast journalism. I had my own children fairly young and soon found that an ambitious media career and 3 young children don't mix terribly well! Seeing a gap in the market in my home village for nursery care I began researching opening a nursery. This journey led me to what is now, Little Barn Owls, but at the time was a happy but financially unstable nursery with a very insecure future. I fell in love with the garden and the woods and my vision had a place on the map. Now I just needed to fill it with passionate, dedicated staff, and work with them to get them to share my dream. 20 months later, after a lot of hard work, a second nursery, and the occasional roller coaster moment of highs and lows, I can honestly say I've never enjoyed anything better than running my nurseries. I've always loved hard work, but hard work alongside a group of people who motivate me is exhilarating! Close second to raising my own children, LBO is the most rewarding, thrilling and exciting experience I've been lucky enough to have. And all because of the people I'm surrounded by. The work they put in after hours and weekends, the emotional investment they make into the families we support, and the culture of passion, excitement and dedication delights me constantly. I'm one very very proud lady. My own children attend the nursery, with Indi and Issy, my twin 3 year olds there 4 days a week. There is no better barometer for success for me than the starkly honest opinions of my own children who have no concern with protecting my feelings! They have recently started chanting 'nursery' on the drive up and literally run in the door. I try not to take it too personally! The nursery is such a big part of their lives, they insist on recalling each of the children's and staff's name every night at bed time (and I mean, every night!).

I look forward to sharing nursery life with you and your children soon.

Take care
Hayley