Manor Wood Children's Centre provides high quality child care and support for families with young children 0-5 years in a thoughtfully designed space with a seamless balance between nurture and learning. 

We consider every 'little person' to be a beautiful, independent, fascinating, creative individual with a huge amount to offer the world. It is our promise to you as parents to provide the highest standards of care and nursery education tailored to your child's individual interests and needs. Your child's safety, personal development and nursery education is of our highest importance.

We draw our inspiration from the childhood centres of Reggio Emilia in Italy. We are also committed to the principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage - this is the national guidance for working with children from birth to five. So we give children of all ages the opportunity to develop skills and knowledge across as many areas of learning as possible.

Ethos

We believe all children have the right to be understood as individuals and be given time and opportunity to develop. We have created an inspirational environment to support exploration and creativity to enable children to learn through play.

Vision

Our vision is to create a setting that values caring and respectful relationships by tuning into children’s interest and their individual needs. 

Key Workers and Family Group

Every child has a key worker who will get to know you and your child well and will be responsible for documenting their learning and planning exciting, engaging and relevant play experiences for your child, as well as providing cuddles, comfort and whole family support. They will also be the person that observes your child, records and shares key milestone developments with you in nursery. In return, we also hope you will share any progress that you experience at home. 

In our over 2’s room, all children will become part of a colour group. Each group has an assigned key worker and is made up of children from 24 months to over 3 years. The colour group approach allows each of our staff members to take the time to truly get to know the children in their care.  This promotes a strong, secure and genuine bond that enables a ‘professional love’ to develop between the child and their key person, and friendships to build between children in the group. 

 

Learning Environment 

Each of our individually designed areas allows children to explore and discover, so they may follow their interests and extend their understanding, skills and knowledge.
Children are given the freedom to explore the nursery at their own pace. Focused learning opportunities are planned on a daily basis, and resources are available to children at all times, allowing them to revisit, extend or adapt their interests and learning as they wish.

The free flow approach here at Manor Wood is one of the main reasons that makes us unique. This approach works on the recognition that children, just like adults, learn best when they are able to explore their interests fully and follow their own agendas through play for any given length of time.

Play is how children learn.  We recognise that what children learn is important, but how children learn is even more important. Through play we support children to build their confidence and independence, we empower children to choose, reason, reflect, imagine and empathise.

 

Our Spaces

The Baby Nest Bungalow

From 6 months we have a dedicated space in which babies are cared for, allowing them to feel secure and enabling them to develop their very own sense of belonging. 

The Baby Nest includes a safe area for non-mobile babies which we call The Snug. This allows them to practice their fine and gross motor skills. The Baby Nest can hold 24 children up to 2 years each day. 

We have selected resources especially for our youngest children such as treasure baskets, heuristic play, lights and mirrors, offering a sensory experience as well as an opportunity to explore and investigate in the wider environment.

The Snug is also a quiet comfy space where children can choose to rest or sail away to the land of dreams in one of our bunk cots or fold out beds.

We strongly believe children benefit greatly from outdoor play and at our nursery we have a continuation of playing and learning inside and out all day long for all ages. We have full all-in-one weather suits for all children, so a bit of drizzle doesn't put us off!

 

The Discovery Room

We already know that children are active learners from birth and their curiosity flourishes when they are free to discover for themselves. The Discovery Room provides an opportunity for children to explore and investigate, to make new discoveries of the world around them and to reflect on how things work and why things happen. It is an ideal space for all of our future architects and mathematicians. As you enter you will see a large interactive white board that we use daily to research, explore and to share photographs and videos of learning.  We have a computer and iPads which allow children to develop the use of technology and research the world around them.

A large number of wooden blocks that enable children to design, represent, recreate and construct their ideas, developing fundamental skills for future learning such as involvement, motivation, and perseverance. The space also includes our home corner, stage and dressing up area where children enter the world of make believe and can allow their imaginations to take over. 

 

The Garden Room

This includes our studio space: we strongly believe all areas within the nursery encourage children to be creative and imaginative, but this area has a range of equipment and plenty of space to really let the imagination fly!  Here we encourage painting, sticking, cutting out, making and creating! It gets extremely messy and we wouldn’t have it any other way! 

The studio enables children to experiment and investigate with everything from paint and collage to natural and recycled materials. It means the children can create their own masterpieces, at Manor Wood every child is an artist!

The Garden Room also has a large indoor sandpit and water area which allows children to pour, fill, mix, contain, and transport as they work things out.  The children also develop the life skills of cooperation, negotiation and satisfaction! 

 

The Garden and Woods Trips

We believe the outdoor learning environment is as important as the rooms indoors and we encourage children to spend as much time outside as they wish.  The garden is viewed as a ‘classroom without walls’, where children can discover and explore.  As we enter the garden, we immediately have a sheltered area which enables us to enjoy the space in all weathers. However, we never let a little rain stop us! By using our ‘outdoor suits’ and wellies we ask you to bring from home, we ensure we use the outdoor space daily. Whether it’s splashing in puddles or baking in our mud kitchen, we really do love our garden. There is plenty of space for running, climbing, using bikes and scooters, which help to develop children’s physical development.  It also offers the opportunity for children to plant and grow their own vegetables... and then, of course, to look after them!

The beauty of children playing outside is that they learn so much more and so differently from playing inside. Taking weekly trips into the woods is also something we place great importance on, allowing children to negotiate uneven ground, circumnavigate logs, wildlife and precious flowers helps even the youngest walkers to manage themselves and better judge risks. We are deeply committed to offering a more heuristic and real experience of the great outdoors that we hope will inspire them and encourage a love and respect for nature for years to come.

 

Nutrition and Mealtimes 

Mealtimes are really important social occasions so we treat them that way. We support children to be independent, to share with others and to talk with their friends. We have a 3 week rotating menu and we are constantly reviewing and adapting it to ensure it meets the needs of the children. We are a pescatarian nursery, we use meat alternatives and we also cater for any special dietary requirement.

Each day we provide 3 balanced nutritional meals and snacks; these are included within our fees. This includes a light breakfast at 8:30am, lunch between 11.30am-12.00 noon and a light tea at 4.00pm. All our meals are planned and home-made on the premises each day by our experienced Nursery Cook. We use fresh fruit and seasonal vegetables, and always encourage children to help prepare meals and snacks throughout the day.

 

Opening Times and Charges

Manor Wood Children’s Centre is open from Monday to Friday, 7:30/8:00am - 6:00pm, 51 weeks of the year. We are closed for Bank Holidays, and 5 training days. We are also shut between Christmas and the New Year. Please see the annual nursery calendar for these dates. The nursery fees are reviewed on an annual basis in July.

Fees

Full Day (8.00am-6.00pm) -   £70.00

We do not offer half days.

 

Parental Involvement 

Parents are encouraged to become as involved as possible in nursery life, and there is a lot for you to be involved in. We pride ourselves on having excellent relationships with our parents. We have informal chats daily where we discuss your child's overall happiness, development and progress at nursery and it is also an opportunity for you to give feedback on your experiences.

Baby Nest provides written and verbal feedback on your child's day, detailing eating, sleeping, activities, developmental progress and emotional well-being. Once a child is in our over 2’s room we record all the same information and give this verbally at the end of the day. Every child has a learning journal on the Famly app which is completed by the child’s key worker, we also ask parents to be fully involved with these too. Parents are encouraged to add in any highlights from home and record any hopes and wishes for your child during their nursery journey. Parents regularly discuss with us what they do outside of nursery as a family and include photos which we love to add into our children's Famly documentation. We feel this gives a thorough overview of a child’s ability and enables us to have an insight into their world that we hear so much about!

 

Early Years Entitlement

Government funding for 9 months, 2 and 3 year old children can be used here. 

To check what childcare support you are entitled to, use https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/

Once your child is eligible for the funding, we can discuss how you would like to use the hours to attend the setting. Children will be able to use their Early Years funding from the term following their birthday. 

 

Children’s Centre and Outside Agencies

Manor Wood has been operating as a Children’s Centre for over 8 years now, providing support and services to families in the area. We have 1 family outreach worker on site that spends their days delivering baby massage groups, parenting programmes, stay and play sessions and book start visits. We work extremely closely together to ensure all children and families who attend the centre have a support package in place if needed. We feel this is another element that makes us so unique and enables children to reach their full potential. 

We have great connections with the local health visiting team and cluster services. 

We assess children within the first month of them starting at nursery and then continually after that. If we identify that your child requires additional support, a discussion will be held with you at the earliest opportunity. If we feel your child may need some extra help, we will take steps to ensure we fully support your child with their needs. Having the family support team on site and working closely with the health visiting team really supports during this time. We have a dedicated staff member who is our SENDCo and we have close links with the Speech and Language Therapy team and local Inclusion workers.