Little Darlings is a small, private nursery in W14 in a home setting, looking after 15/16 children per day from the ages of 6 months – 5 years. We have created a safe, stimulating setting in which the children interact together and feel at ‘home’. We believe that by allowing the children to interact and play together they learn from each other. We have a dog, Nancy, and two cats, Michael and Annie that live at the setting and are a very special part of Little Darlings but they do not have any unsupervised contact with the children.
We focus on teaching the children about living a healthy lifestyle, respecting nature, animals and the environment, having good manners and being kind to each other. We have a large 70ft private, secure garden in which we spend as much time as possible, we grow and plant flowers and vegetables with the children, feed the birds and squirrels and organise physical, fun activities. Food is very important to us and we only provide fresh, homemade and whenever possible organic and sustainable snacks and lunch. A menu highlighting all allergens in each dish is emailed to parents every four weeks.
Each child has a key person who is responsible for monitoring and recording their learning and development. We keep development files for each child focusing on the EYFS requirements containing photographic evidence and written observations, take on-going assessments to ensure that the children are meeting all expected milestones and provide parents with a daily sheet containing information about their child’s day such as nappy changing, nap times, eating and activities. We work very closely with parents, share information regularly, have parent’s meetings, email four-week activity plans, send out a newsletter bi-annually and ask parents to complete a questionnaire regularly so that we can hear their views and suggestions to help us provide the best service possible.
Every day the children take part in Music Time which includes singing, musical instruments and dancing, Story Time, Physical Play and Exercise and planned activities. We focus on a different country each month, teaching the children about different cultures and the world, different languages, food, celebrations and festivals and beliefs.
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