Why Choose Nannas?

Parents are highly valued at the nursery and their contribution is constantly requested and ideas embraced. We understand how difficult the process is of finding a nursery that is right for you, your family and your child and aim to make this transition and process as smooth as possible.

Settling in sessions are available to enable you to begin to get to know us and feel comfortable with the nursery and the staff before leaving your most precious and prized belonging with us! At these settling in sessions, every child at the nursery chooses their own Key Person who will be your main point of contact with the nursery.

The Key Person will develop an intimate working relationship both with the child and yourself, enabling them to discover the child's individual likes, wants, interests and needs. The Key Person spends valuable time gaining information from parents and their observations of the child to use their knowledge, beliefs and views to expertly plan for their individual Learning Journeys through natural sensory play activities and experiences. The children relish the opportunity to become involved in their own learning and contribute ideas regularly to improving the setting and the service provided to them and their families. The success of this system is down to the practitioners experience, true dedication, passion and nurturing attitude towards the children and the job they are doing which is reflected in the nursery's low staff turnover and buzzing atmosphere.

The nursery's unique daily planning includes elements which support exploring, moving, listening, eating, resting and a 'daily inspiration'. This is a special activity planned for the day where the children become the sole focus, all other activity within the room stops and practitioners have a fun, exciting, 'inspiring' time with the children. Our Inspirational Activities have included body painting, bug hunting, cooking pizzas, box play, making tree spirits and clay modelling.

Practitioners are committed to working in partnership with parents and have effective systems in place such as Friends of the Nursery meetings (a parents forum), regular questionnaires/surveys, newsletters, annual fete's/charity events and parents evenings. The exceptionally comprehensive policies and procedures, written with practitioners and parents, are fully implemented throughout the nursery which shows staffs good understanding and these are also shared with parents in each child's individual Profile, which they have also contributed to during annual reviews.

As the nurseries are based both within the grounds of a busy hospital and local school in a developing town, the nursery's knowledge of the community's wants and needs has been greatly developed over the years. Regular fund raising events are planned at the nursery by practitioners and parents to continue to raise money for the children's ward and other worthy causes at the hospital and within the local communities. The nursery's work in partnership with local schools to provide work placements and training for school students including extended schools placements and NVQ apprenticeships.

Nannas is currently aiming to have an all-natural Day Nursery. This has been trialled in our baby department where all our plastic toys were donated to the hospital and instead replaced with all natural items such as fir cones, raffia, wooden bricks, pebbles and corks (to give a few examples) to further develop our babies and young children's sensory, heuristic play through treasure baskets, of which parents played a key role in helping to collect/recycle many items through our natural resource amnesty.

The company and practitioners are very much behind these theories of how children learn, and the benefits of using these natural resources to develop childrens senses and thus connections within the brain to build upon their future learning and development.

Another part of this natural play ethos is our commitment to implementing Forest Schools in our settings whereby children are encouraged to go 'back to basics', embracing the outdoor learning environment. Practitioners have received 'leader' training and are currently cascading this down to other practitioners, empowering them with the knowledge and idea behind the theory to incorporate into weekly sessions at the local woods where children make dream catchers, learn about looking after the natural environment and whittle wood, to give but a few examples.