Welcome to Wood St Nursery – A Warm and Nurturing Environment
Wood St Nursery is a warm and loving place. We believe in being children’s advocates and allies on their journey to growing strong, communicating effectively, and becoming capable and resilient.
We believe that nurturing children starts with building strong relationships with their families and creating a supportive and happy staff team. Our team is highly trained and experienced, and we understand that children thrive in environments where there are strong relationships with skilled practitioners. That’s why we focus on learning through love, exploring, and play, rather than age-inappropriate formal sessions. Whether it’s singing songs, playing with mud, or engaging in hands-on learning, we provide experiences that are rich, exciting, and meaningful.
Sustainability at the Heart of Our Nursery
We also care deeply about our environmental impact. At Wood St Nursery, we make it a priority to minimise waste and adopt sustainable practices throughout our nursery. Here are some of the ways we support sustainability:
- We recycle all food waste.
- We minimise the use of single-use plastics, including straws, glitter, and disposable plates and cups.
- We recycle paper, card and plastic containers through junk modelling or recycle bins.
- The children’s daily routine involves actively identifying and recycling different materials. They empty their food waste into green caddy bins and choose between landfill and recycling bins when throwing things away.
- We support parents who choose to use real nappies.
A Calm, Inspiring Learning Environment
We strongly believe in creating a calm and inviting nursery space that supports both emotional and physical development. Our nursery is filled with a mix of natural materials, real objects, and age-appropriate toys. We aim to avoid overly bright and plastic-heavy environments, instead creating a setting that feels peaceful and engaging.
Our staff has also attended Elizabeth Jarman’s ‘Communication Friendly Spaces’ training, and we implement her ideas to ensure our nursery is an effective learning environment that promotes children’s emotional growth and language development.
High-Quality, Open-Ended Resources for Learning
We invest in high-quality, open-ended resources that support the seven areas of learning and development. We focus on providing continuous provision where children are free to self-select anything they want to play with. Here’s a snapshot of the resources available at our nursery
Quiet Spaces: Several calm, cozy areas (both indoors and outdoors) filled with a variety of books, story sacks, and puppets and soft toys where children can relax and engage in quiet reading or storytelling.
Block Play: Extensive small, medium, and large blocks based on the Froebel model. These blocks allow children to create exciting constructions that support both small world play (e.g., building zoos, farms, garages and roadways) and role play (e.g., building dens, fire engines, shops, cafes).
Tactile Play: A wide variety of hands-on activities like sand, water, play-doh, a mud kitchen; sensory play materials such as pasta, lentils, flour; and a daily dose of something fascinating – gloop, slime, mixed materials to sieve and sort.
Water Play: A range of water play resources that foster scientific discovery, fine and gross motor skills, and creativity. This includes toy fish, water animals, water birds, natural resources (shells, pebbles, sea weed, drift wood); pipettes, jugs, cups, funnels and pipes, teapots, test tubes, floating and sinking, bubbles, colour mixing etc.
Climbing Equipment: Flexible climbing structures that can be reconfigured in many ways to provide challenging, stimulating play.
Teaching Responsibility and Respect
Children are encouraged to take pride in, value and care for the nursery environment. Our staff guide children to do this when organising, cleaning, and tidying the resources. With clear picture labels and consistent routines, children learn how to take responsibility for their nursery and how to respect the resources they use.
Outdoor Learning in All Seasons
We believe in maximising the time children spend learning and playing outside, no matter the season, and therefore children have continuous access to the garden throughout the day, except at group and meal times. Our outdoor learning is an integral part of the nursery experience, and we continuously modify and adapt the environment and resources to meet the evolving needs of the children and families who use our nursery.
A Nursery That Adapts to Your Child’s Needs
At Wood St Nursery, we continuously reflect on the needs of each child and family, ensuring our environment evolves accordingly. Whether it’s through fostering independence, enhancing creativity, or nurturing resilience, our goal is to provide a rich, supportive space for every child to thrive.