We’re absolutely thrilled to share our new website with you, giving you a really good insight into how we operate within the Three Little Birds nursery group. It’s the first of many exciting changes...
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Three Little Birds
Yardley Forest Nursery
Welcome to Yardley Forest Nursery. Our beautiful nursery was built during the 1840’s during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1 as a hunting lodge. The property became a nursery in the early 2000’s. Our nursery takes 41 children a day and has a wonderful team.
Outdoor learning
Our nursery is located only a few footsteps away from an entrance to Epping Forest. This means we are able to offer enhanced outdoor experiences for all children as they love to explore nature. We have a trained Forest School Leader on-site.
The children take part in activities such as making fairy houses, digging for dinosaur bones/ fossils and making potions from things they have found in the forest.
Our Forest School Leader is qualified and passionate in teaching children to respect the environment, nature and the world around us.
We are open from 7.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, 51 weeks of the year. We close for the week between Christmas and New Year and bank holidays.
Location
We are based in a quiet location next to Epping Forest. There is a 379 hop on/off bus on the road outside which can take you to Chingford train station for the overground line. On the main road there is a 215 bus which takes you to Walthamstow Central for the over ground or Victoria line.
Our ethos
Our aim is to provide the highest quality of childcare and education for all children, ensuring it is appropriate to age and unique needs. We believe children can thrive and succeed from relationships that are loving and secure. Our embedded key person approach promotes this and means we can respond carefully to children’s feelings and behaviours – ensuring we meet their emotional needs.
We work in partnership with our families to boost the joy, contentment and wellbeing of every child we care for. The foundation of our curriculum comes from our children, staff and families. We nurture our children to give them the ability to learn for themselves and provide opportunity for decision making, exploration and experimentation. Children have time to discover and explore in our holistic learning approach. This allows our skilled staff to shape learning via the children’s preferred activities and individual strengths - scaffolding development through the seven areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage. We structure and support their journey as lifelong learners.
Our nursery manager
My name is Stacey and I am the Manager here at Yardley Forest. I have worked within the childcare sector since 2005, with children aged between three months and five years. During this time, I gained Level 3 in Childcare and Early Years, trained to be a Forest School Leader and to provide Speech and Language support for children under 5, plus studied Leadership and Management.
I am a big believer in learning alongside the children. I love watching them as they discover something for the first time, from speaking their first word to learning about the planets in our solar system. I also encourage as much outdoor play as possible. Through my Forest School Leader qualification, I have embraced outdoor play to a whole new level, from making fairy houses using resources that we forage alongside the children, to digging for dinosaur bones and fossils - wherever their imagination takes them.
This has also influenced me at home too as I participate in my own arts and crafts to make things for the setting inspired by my love of fantasy in TV, film and gaming. I am very much a family orientated person and therefore enjoy spending time with them where I can.
Our nursery is a listed building which consists of a 2-storey detached house. Our nursery has four rooms: Baby room, Toddler room, Nursery room and Pre-school. Plus three gardens in our outside space.
Baby Room
Our Baby Room ratio is one adult to three children and takes six children from 3 months to 1 year.
We provide a range of exciting fun and messy activities for the children to explore and have fun with whilst extending their development needs. The staff within the Baby Room make sure that the children and parents feel safe and secure whilst in their care, as we know leaving your baby in the care of someone else is an important decision that we want you to feel comfortable with.
The babies enjoy going out in the gardens to get regular exercise through rolling, crawling and sometimes cruising alongside larger objects and to observe the nature around us.
All children are given a daily handover of what the child has eaten, nappy changes, sleep time and what activities they have enjoyed doing at nursery. We try to adapt to work in partnership with you and your baby’s routines as best as we can to make the transition to nursery as smooth as possible.
Toddler Room
Our Toddler Room ratio is one adult to three children and takes eight children from 1 to 2 years.
The toddlers enjoy lots of different activities within the room such as using natural objects to make marks with paint, looking at illustrations in books and sensory time with lights, sounds and different textures. They also enjoy the outdoor space and use this time to experiment with their abilities as they learn and develop in activities such as the mini slide, digging and discovering nature through pine cones, leaves and branches.
It is around this age that the children start to show curiosity in walking around to find objects at different heights. We encourage this curiosity by having some activities on the floor mats and others on the table to engage this interest.
Nursery Room
Our Nursery Room ratio is one adult to four children and takes 12 children from 2-3 years.
In the Nursery Room children are beginning to ask questions about the world that they see. This is why we offer activities such as finding bugs, cooking cakes and biscuits, and allowing opportunities to recreate things that they have seen, such as roleplaying going to the shops. We even go on walks to the shops to help them relive this experience to buy fresh fruit and veg for the setting.
The children also show great interest in listening to stories and quite often stop what they are doing to came and sit next to those who are reading a story. A recurring favourite is “We are going on a lion hunt.”
The children also demonstrate an interest in mark-making by using a range of tools (sometimes unconventional) to create art in the colours, type e.g. chalks and paper of their choosing. In some circumstances cars and trains are used to create tyre marks on the paper to create their own roads.
Pre-school Room
Our Pre-school Room ratio is one adult to eight children and takes 15 children from 3 to 5 years old.
Preschool children enjoy having free-flow access to the barked garden which allows the children to roam freely between the indoor and outdoor activities.
The children do exciting and stimulating activities throughout the day. This includes creating their own songs, dance moves or stories, making homes for animals we find or want to find, as we learn about life cycles and researching together with our teachers what interests we have and finding out the answers to our questions. An example would be that the children wanted to know how many moons Jupiter has. Which together we discovered was 79 moons!
They learn about living healthily and join in activities such as making their own fruit salad or tea for learning about healthy/unhealthy diets, discovering about the body such as hearing heart beats and blindfolded taste tests as well as physical exercise, which they quite often request.
We also have keyworker time where the key people split the class into their groups and conduct a mini lesson on an element of the Early Years Foundation Stage as they work together as a group. This encourages the group to be involved with team work, listening to others and respecting other people’s opinions. We have found that this also helps the children prepare for school when it becomes time for them to leave.
When September approaches and it is almost time for the children to leave to go to school, we hold a graduation ceremony which all school year leavers are invited to attend. Each child receives a certificate for graduating our setting and they also have a gift for the family.
Outside space
Our nursery has an amazing outdoor space with three different gardens. We have a barked garden which joins onto Pre-School allowing free-flow for the children, a soft play garden and a grass garden which has swings.
All of our gardens are teaming with wildlife; we have seen squirrels and a range of birds. In our grass garden it has been known to see muntjac deer, grass snakes and ducks from time to time, plus even a peacock!
Settle sessions
It is important to us that your child feels welcomed, secure and loved in our nursery. We offer bespoke and flexible settling sessions to gradually introduce your child into their new environment. Our settling-in sessions provide an opportunity for your child to form a relationship with their key-person so they can understand their individual needs and interests, to create a secure foundation for their ongoing learning.
Our flexible and tailor-made settling session, allow you and your child a gradual transition into nursery.
Please view our Settling in Policy to see our settle session procedure throughout the current lockdown period.
Payment options
We also accept nursery fees via direct debit, the government Tax Free Childcare scheme and childcare vouchers. You can talk to your Nursery Manager to find out more or visit www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare to see if you can benefit from the scheme.
We are pleased to be able offer the 15 hour Funded Early Education Entitlement for all children from the term after they turn 3 years old. In addition, we offer the 2 year old and 30 hour Funded Early Education Entitlement for families that qualify. Please speak with your Nursery Manager to find out if you are eligible and for more information.
Fees
Monthly Fees Under 2’s
5 days: £1500.0000
4 days: £1255.00
3 days: £940.00
2 days: £625.00
1 day: £74.00
Monthly Fees Over 2’s
5 days: £1310.00
4 days: £1100.00
3 days: £825.00
2 days: £550.00
1 day: £65.00
3-5 year old Universal Funding (15hrs)
5 days: £1079.63
4 days: £869.63
3 days: £594.63
2 days: £319.63
Daily rate for extra sessions only
3-5-year old Extended Funding (30hrs)
5 days: £849.25
4 days: £639.25
3 days: £364.25
2 days: £242.83
Daily rate for extra sessions only
Nutrition
Our menus are designed so that we offer balanced, nutritious meals which include a wide range of vegetables and fruits, proteins, starchy foods, dairy and non-dairy alternatives. Our recipes are low in sugars and salts and are diverse so the children can experience a variety of different tastes and smells.
Our nursery staff have completed food hygiene training and we cater for children with allergies and other nutrition needs or preferences.
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Yardley Forest Nursery