Park Day Nursery is a 80 place day nursery set in an old Victorian house, open from 7:30am until 6pm Monday-Friday 51 weeks of the year. We are located very close to Palmer Park, with Reading Town Centre a short bus ride away and Reading College at 10 minute walk away.

At Park Day Nursery we pride ourselves on being a small and intimate nursery, all of our staff know each individual child and plan activities and games around their individual interests.

Our ethos is to maintain a homely environment where both parents and children are able to feel at home.

We place a lot of focus on the 3 prime areas of learning particularly with the children aged 3 years and younger, with dedicated physical development, sensory and art rooms.

Updated August 2023

At Park Day Nursery we undertake an initial baseline assessment on entry into the setting. This is an observation on the child and their stages of learning. We begin this baseline at the child's home visit and settling in sessions to enable us to best support the child's individual learning and development when they start with us. From their basline assessment we are able to develop achieveable next steps for the key person to work towards with each individual child. From these next steps the key person will provide focused activities to enable the child to reach their next steps.

From this we are able to assess how the child is developing, in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), and whether additional support is required.

When additional support has been identified, particular focus is placed on the areas of development required. This is undertaken on more of a one to one basis with their key person.

If we identify further support is required we will then undertake an Individual Education Plan (IEP) in conjunction with the child's parents, key person and Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) which identifies how the team can support the child to reach their next steps in all areas of learning and development.

This is reviewed every 4 weeks or as deemed necessary.

We have daily discussions with you regarding your child and their progress through our verbal handovers and the use of Dayshare and Tapestry platforms. If we identify any areas requiring extra support we discuss directly with you any concerns you may have and how we can work together to support your child. This is done informally with the key person during daily communications.

If we identify that further support is required, we will invite you in to the nursery for a meeting with your child's key person and the SENCO to develop an Individual Education Plan to support your child's learning and development. You are then invited to an IEP review every term, where we can adjust their targets and discuss how they are progressing.

All of the activities and rooms are arranged to meet the needs of every child. We understand that not one child is the same and have different interests, likes and dislikes.

Prior to starting at the nursery the Deputy Manager and key person will conduct a home visit at your home to enable your child to meet their key person and for us to complete a 'getting to know my family and me' form. This form enables us to gather together all information about your child's likes, dislikes and individual needs. This informal meeting also enables you to express any concerns you may have about your child's development and allows us to discuss the support we can offer.

Our practitioners are able to then plan and prepare their activities around your child's differing needs. For example if your child has a hearing impairment we would encourage them to sit close to the practitioner during activities and grouptimes; ensuring the practitioner faces the child directly whilst they are speaking to allow the child to lip read or engage themselves in the practitioner's conversation.

We have a variety of resources and toys to help support each child and their needs, from chunky pens and left handed scissors to Mantra Lingua PenPal - a device which enables books to be read in a variety of different languages.

We like to ensure we have a very close working relationship with the parents of children within our care, to ensure we are supporting any additional requirements. We discuss with the parents what they are doing at home and what works well for their child. As mentioned earlier - what works for one child may not work for another; at Park Day Nursery we treat every child as a unique individual.

We work closely with the Reading Borough to develop strategies to support speech and language development; we use a series of books provided by the ICAN charity, which provides a vast amount of activities and games to undertake to develop listening and language skills. We work closely with other agencies as required and seek support from experts to enable us to best support each child.

As stated previously if a child has a hearing impairment we would encourage them to sit close to the practitioner during activities and grouptimes and ensuring the practitioner faces the child directly whilst they are speaking to allow the child to lip read or engage themselves in the practitioner's conversation.

At Park Day Nursery our Special Educational Needs Coordinator  (level 3 SENCo) is out of ratioed numbers so undertakes additional activities with the children on a one to one basis. We also have an intervention room where the SENCO can take small groups of children to undertake specific activities tailored to their individual needs.

The SENCo works closely with families, practitioners and professionals to help support children with SEND. Other professionals include speech and language therapists, Teacher of the deaf, SEND advisory team and other external agencies. 

Each half term, our Head of Academic and Teaching tracks all children's progress from the previous half term. From this tracking we can see how each child is progressing and whether there are any 'gaps' which needs to be closed. Through the use of the Tapestry platform our Daily Operations Coordinator looks daily at the observations of the children to ensure progress is being made. As a parent you have your own account for Tapestry and are able to monitor your own child's progress and contribute to their learning journal. Tapestry allows you to comment on any observations we have made and you can see firsthand how your child is progressing.

We also hold parent's evenings twice a year to discuss your child's progress, and if your child has an IEP we have a meeting termly to review it as well as verbal handovers daily.

To ensure we are able to include all children in our activities practitioners ensure they adapt what they are doing for each of the individual children. Each of our toys are based at the various stages of development and requirements from Balance bikes to 4 wheeled cars, from chunky pencils and crayons to fine pencils and "teachers pens".

When the need arises we will buy additional resources to support individual children as required.

Currently we do have a number of stairs within the setting, we do have access to the nursery by the side of the building, however there are still steps to negotiate to move rooms or enter the setting fully. Each of our stairs have a hand rail to support the children in moving up and down stairs.

To ensure we are able to support different settings we complete transition reports on the children when they leave us. We will provide the new setting with their learning journal so far and a transition report covering all the areas of learning.

In preparation for school we undertake the following:

• Regular group times talking about school.

• P.E. lessons – the term before children leave us for school we ask parents to bring in a P.E kit to encourage the children to dress themselves.

• Encouraging recognition of own name

• Encourage children to bring in new school uniforms to show everyone

• Pictures of new school for children to begin to recognise and create links.

• School books are created - showing pictures of their school and information on their teacher.

• Parents board show which school other children will be attending to know which of their friends will bejoining their new school.

To To ensure we strong links with the schools we encourage the following:

• Teacher to visit the nursery

• Transitional records on the child’s development at the setting

• Visits to the schools the children will be attending.

• Regular communication with schools before and after the child has started at the school.

• Photographs of the new school/ uniforms/ room.
  

• The October following a school transition we send the schools a questionnaire to obtain feedback on how our children have settled 

We undertake an annual audit on all of our provisions within the setting whether it is Special Educational Needs, Health and Safety, Safeguarding etc.

We have lots of opportunities for parents to make suggestions, we have parents evening twice a year, an annual garden party, parental questionnaires as well as an open door policy within the nursery

If you would like a place at the setting you need to contact Jackie Brown who is the nursery owner.

At Park Day Nursery we an open door policy where we encourage parents to discuss any concerns or compliments directly to us.

We encourage parents to inform our management team of any concerns immediately so they can be dealt with as soon as possible, parents are kept informed of action taken throughout the process.