Our Facilities
At Little Barn Owls Day Nursery we pride ourselves on being able to plan and offer a great range of fun, stimulating, creative activities to help your child develop in all areas of learning. Learning through play happens everyday both inside the nursery barns and outdoors in our huge garden areas, assisted by our family of qualified staff.
Inside the nursery
Classes – Little one's Yoga, French and Spanish classes!
Messy Play Area – Here the children do cooking, painting, big art, paper mache, junk modelling, playing with cooked pasta and food dye, play doh, pottery and anything really messy!
ICT area – Our nursery computer, camcorders and cameras are available for the children to use whenever they choose and staff are on hand to guide them in the fun and learning that can be had with modern technology!
Graphics area – Independent choice of cutting, sticking, glueing, drawing, colouring creating and exploring with all types of tool and materials. We would encourage the children to make pictures and collages around the play journeys they lead us on. Paper and mark making materials are available in all play areas in wicker baskets of both nurseries to encourage every opportunity for early writing.
Construction and Small World – Our building blocks, lego, stickle bricks and little people village enable the children to use their imagination to create child led situations where they lead each other and the staff on their journey of play. Free choice trolleys where children self select toys encourages independence.
Discovery area – Sand, water, leaves, science and nature – here the children learn about the natural world around them by using sticks, grass, bugs and things found in the garden or the community around them to investigate and create natural world scenes. We also encourage mark making in sand and other materials to encourage letter and number formation.
Cuddle and Book Corner – Cuddles are on offer at our nursery all the time for whenever our children need or want them, and stories are read to the children regularly in this area on a comfy cushion. We hope to help them discover a respect of books and a joy of reading for life. Our books are chosen and rotated often around the children's changing interests and learning journeys to link in with other areas and resources around the nursery.
Role Play – grown ups world – The children can create a shop, a house, a vets surgery, a doctors surgery, a travel agents and play as grown ups. Our themes change as the children's natural discovery through play changes. Learning about 'People who help us', would encourage the children to dress up as doctors, nurses and police men for example, and discuss with them the roles of those people in the real world and help act them out.
Heuristic Play – Both our nurseries include a full range of natural materials in common found shells, stones, woods and metals. We encourage textural natural exploration of these to integrate into their imaginative play.
Daily Diary – Every day you will have a full handover of your child's day. This will include which activities they chose to take part in and what they enjoyed, their behaviour and toilet patterns (if in nappies or potty training) and details of their eating and drinking that day.
'My Story' Learning Journal
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum for Under 5's and make ongoing focused observations on your child across the six learning areas. These will be recorded in your child's personal 'My Story' learning journal along with photographs and descriptions of the activity your child enjoyed. Your child's key worker will plan 'next steps' of development for your child every six weeks. We discuss your child's wellbeing and progress with you as a continuous dialogue, and you have access to their learning journals at any time. We would discuss your child's development and agree with you some development milestones to work towards in more detail at our twice yearly parents' evenings.
