Play Den

About Us

We are a 48 place family run, homely nursery and pre-school setting based in Upper Stratton offering award winning high-quality child care for children from 3 months to 11 years. Described as 'a little gem', our ethos it to 'celebrate the uniqueness of each child and ensure that they are able to fully reach their potential by providing challenging, yet achievable activities to enable children to reach their goals'. Established in 2005, we have been 'igniting the minds of little learners' for almost two decades. We offer term-time only contracts to our parents and carers in professions that only require 39 week contracts. We offer government early education funded sessions from 9 months to 4 years of age (until your child starts school).
We believe children learn best when they feel safe and secure. We do this by establishing strong bonds with our children and their families to ensure we truly get to know your child to enable us to plan activities and events that meet their interests. Our curriculum is widely varied to accommodate all styles of learning, including a balance of child-indicated and adult led activities, Forest school activities and Every Child a Talker:
Our passion is that every child should have a 'voice' (including using Sign along) to ensure they can make their needs and wishes known. We want all of our children to understand language and communicate well. We do this by having a key story each term which we re-tell in a variety of ways. We ask open ended questions such as 'I wonder what will happen if...' and 'How shall we...' to simulate their understanding and encourage independent ideas.
Our staff understand the varying ways children learn and support them through scaffolding, sustained shared thinking and provide a continuous learning environment where children have activities and resources always available to them.
We encourage independence with our children and teach them to put on their shoes and coats, to pour water from a jug and to self- serve at meal times.
We have forged excellent links with our professional partners including our local schools, health visiting teams and social care services.
We value our local community and take our children our regularly for walks, to the library and to the local shops. We also plan sports day, outings beyond our local community, open day events and organise fund-raising events to teach our children about those less fortunate than themselves.
* We offer holiday club for children of all ages
* We offer after school clubs for children attending St. Catherine's, Beechcroft and Ruskin junior schools.
* We provide an online-learning journal (Tapestry) of your child to ensure you are included in your child's learning and development
* Our staff team team are qualified from Level 2 to Level 6 in Early Education and Childcare and our apprentices are working towards a qualification.
* Every child has a key person - your dedicated member of staff keeping you up to date with your child's development.
* All of our staff receive paediatric first aid training
* All of our staff receive a minimum of Level 2 Safeguarding training
* We have two gardens that are suitable for all year play and education and ensures the ages and stages of development are met.
* Every child has their own tooth-brush and clean their teeth every lunch time