Welcome to Once Upon a Time Day Nurseries, West Drayton. The nursery is situated in the West Drayton Football Club on Cherry Lane. We are open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 7:45am to 6pm. We cater for children from 3 months to 5 years old. The children have access to two main play rooms, a sensory room and a large outdoor play area.

Our focus is to support children's wellbeing. We want children to be able to manage their emotions and communicate this to others. We have looked into different research that has been conducted and found techniques that we are implementing within the setting. We are a High Scope based setting and the techniques that we have implemented also supports our High Scope ethos. High Scope is all about the children being active learners. We now have a curriculum strongly focused on these areas.

West Drayton Nursery

Ofsted report

In both rooms the children are welcomed in a warm and friendly way, the practitioners will take time to make each child feel welcome. This sets the children up for a positive day where they feel valued. We have two large group times per day where all children will get the opportunity to take part. We always start these sessions with some breathing exercises. Breathing exercises have been known to increase the feeling of calmness.

All children also have the opportunity to take part in a small group time each day. The children belong to a small group led by their key person. The key person will help the child to settle in and build up positive attachments. This can help the children to feel emotionally secure when away from home. The key group will take part in daily activities, this gives practitioners opportunities to spend time with the key group as a whole and to teach them new skills. We want parents to be involved in the children’s learning and we will often ask the parents what they would like the children to learn and develop so that we can include their ideas into our sessions. Practitioners will teach the children new skills as well as develop on skills that the children already have. They will then plan activities for the children to access independently throughout their day to consolidate this learning.

Throughout the children’s time at the setting, staff and children will practice yoga moves. The children in the Sunflower room will start with the most basic moves and as they become more confident, more challenging moves are added. Yoga not only supports physical development; it also increases body awareness and mindfulness as well as improving emotional regulation and supports self-esteem. These are all the things we want our children to learn here with us and hopefully take with them in the future.

Our room layout and routine have all been created purposefully to meet the High Scope principles, the layout allows the children to flow through the areas. We also consider the current cohort of children attending the setting to create this and make any changes needed.

From the research we looked at we found that the best way to boost self-esteem and self-worth is by learning something new. Practitioners will always try to introduce new learning to the children. They will challenge children's thinking and offer suggestions and ideas where possible to get the children to think about alternative ideas. We have found this works well during story telling sessions where the practitioners will suggest alternative endings for the stories and will encourage the children to create their own too. We want to create a language rich environment, where everybody’s views and opinions are valued and children of all abilities are welcomed. We want all of our children to become confident in expressing themselves.

Physical exercise is always encouraged, the children go on lots of different trips, some of the trips we have been on include:

Hounslow urban farm
Hobble down
Theatre
Science museum

Children have access to the outdoor environment daily. We will often have opportunities for the children to play games such as ‘what’s the time Mr wolf’. Team games help the children to feel part of the group and support them to feel valued.

Practitioners have been developing this curriculum and embedding the skills that we would like to teach the children. We want children to use these skills independently when they leave us to start their next chapter. We use breathing exercises before different activities such as sleep time to help the children to calm down. We also use this technique when the children are upset or frustrated. Practitioners will often talk to the children about emotions and will encourage the children to talk about how they are feeling. We encourage the children to express their emotions and will talk to them about strategies that they can use to support them. For instance, we have a calm corner for the children to access. We hope that as the children grow and develop, they will be able to use these techniques and the things we have taught them to support them later in life. We also have a sensory room to support the children within the setting.

At the setting we have been trained in implementing the Playing and learning to socialise (PALS) programme. The benefits of this program include:

confidence
self-esteem
resilience
interaction
social skills
independence
curiosity
coping with challenging situations

We have also been trained in Attention Autism, this will help to support and build attention and listening skills at an appropriate developmental level. It will also support and develop the child's social communication skills, such as taking turns or using vocalisations. We want all of our children to be able to express themselves.

We often look at the similarities and differences between ourselves and encourage the children to do the same. We want the children to be aware of not only themselves but also others. We encourage the children and parents to make donations of food, and the children will take these to the local church to donate. This is a great opportunity to teach the children about kindness and the community that we live in. It teaches the children about respect for others. We want our setting to be a positive place for all children and we want the children who attend to have a positive impression of themselves and what they offer to the world. Overall, we want the children to take to the lead and be passionate about learning.