Our Nursery

The Baby Room

'Play is the beginning of knowledge.' (George Dorsey)

  • Baby playing with stick in nature
  • Babies messy play with gloop
  • Baby playing in small world tuft tray
  • Baby playing small world play with herbs
  • Babies painting
  • Babies reading in garden book den
  • Babies posting, playing with toddle boxes
  • Babies playing in mud kitchen
  • Baby having a bottle with key person
  • Baby exploring treasure basket
  • Babies heuristic play

Our aim in The Baby Room is to ensure your child is nurtured to become a confident, happy and inquisitive child.

The Baby Room incorporates our babies and young toddlers. We offer a high quality of care, in our younger and older babies rooms, as well as a bedroom.  The rooms have been arranged to create a homely environment, where the babies and toddlers can feel relaxed and secure.  The older babies room provides a spacious area for the older children to explore and investigate.  The cosy rooms allow the babies and toddlers to be in separate rooms, or together to learn from each other.

The rooms are well equipped with age appropriate resources, and provide opportunities for the children to explore and investigate. The children have varied sensory opportunities and experiences, both indoors and outdoors, to develop their independent thinking. Treasure baskets and heuristic play (collections of everyday objects with lots of scope for imaginative play and problem solving) are based in the rooms for the child’s development in all areas.  Your child’s journey and progress through the EYFS is recorded in their learning journal which is available online through eyLog. Key Person's make professional judgement assessments of where their children are at in their journey through the EYFS and support children with next steps during their play, planning in the moment (for more information on our planning, visit http://www.greatwoodfarm.co.uk/about-us/our-planning-observations-and-assessments/)

The children learn through play and all of the prime areas of the EYFS are well supported; the prime areas are the focus for The Baby Room.  A lot of this learning takes place outside, which we promote throughout the year.  We also have facilities to offer outdoor sleeping for babies, this may happen whilst babies fall asleep in pushchairs on a walk in the woods or farm or on rest beds in our outdoor sleep hut (we use this from Spring to Autumn).  If parents prefer they can opt for their babies to sleep inside in our cosy sleep room.

A daily diary is recorded on eyLog and will be shared with parents at the end of each day – this will record your child’s routine. These diaries can be accessed via the eyLog app each day. Our key person system operates in this room and promotes parent partnership ensuring the best possible outcomes for the children. We always welcome and encourage parental input and greatly value working with parents.

The staff ratio in this room is a minimum of 1:3.