At Highbury Nursery we have discovered that empowering our children is the most powerful tool in developing creativity throughout our nursery.

This starts with our youngest children who join our setting.

We focus on personal, social and emotional development from our first point of contact with parents. Forging early and strong partnerships ensure a two-way flow of information between nursery and home, which means critical information, is shared about the child’s achievements and interests in both the home and nursery environments. When children move to another room or on to school, we ensure smooth transitions, we allow the children choice through the nursery, so the children are familiar with all the rooms in the setting. Often when they have grown out of one room, they initiate the move themselves, which we actively encouraged.

If the children are not happy to do this, the existing keyperson visit the next room with the child and new keypersons visit the child’s previous room. At each point of transition, parents and new keypersons review the transition process, update paperwork and meet to get to know each other. This also updates information on a child’s achievements and interests and what makes them special.

Our environment is crucial to offering appropriate challenges through planned, purposeful play. We have a sensory room all year round, as well as a large kitchen area with child sized equipment. We have tailored all the rooms to have nappy change facilities and art sinks in every base room, or just off the base room. This means the staff have everything to hand when they are in the play spaces and the routines of the day flow with minimal interruptions.

We also make sure all areas of the early year’s foundation stage are covered and regularly reviewed. Our garden is ever evolving – lots of our children regularly choose to be in the garden, we regard it as the inside outside and use it as such.