Settling in
Children will attend settling in sessions at the nursery to allow them to settle into the new environment before officially starting. This will be arranged about a month prior to your child starting with us and we usually arrange at least 5 settles to allow the children to experience different times of the day and get used to nursery life and routine. During the first visit, staff discuss the child’s routine with the parents/carers and there is some paperwork completed/sent home to complete to allow us to get to know the child further.
What we provide
- Milk at mealtimes and water throughout the day
- AM Snack – As per daily menu
- Lunch – As per daily menu
- PM Snack – As per daily menu
What you provide
- Babies bottles – please provide one bottle for each feed your child requires at nursery. We will rinse bottles before returning them home but will not sterilise.
- Spare Clothes / Indoor/ Outdoor footwear / outdoor clothing/ hats.
- Whilst staff will take care with your child’s belongings please be aware that items may become very dirty, shoes may scuff and items may get lost/ misplaced. We do recommend labelling things to prevent items getting lost.
- Nappies, wipes/cotton wool and any nappy cream
- Bedding (a sheet and a blanket/sleep bag and any comforts)
- A dinner/ dinner snack if this is something you would like your child to have with us. This is given between 4-4.30pm.
- Any daily comforts needed (teddies, dummies etc.)
- Teething gels/powders if these are something you would like nursery to use
Clothing
You are required to supply the following items for your child on a daily basis:
- Appropriate footwear for indoor/ outdoors (welly boots and a pair of shoes/trainers)
- Appropriate clothing for outdoor play (waterproofs, sunhat/woolly hat, gloves, scarf..)
- Spare vests, tops, trousers, jumpers, socks, pants etc.
Sleeping
Your child will have the opportunity to nap in a quiet area supervised by staff. We have sleep mats and travel cots to use for nap times. To limit cross infection each child will bring their own bedding kept in their bag. The children can sleep at whatever time suits them. We will always suit the individual child’s routine and this can of course change which is discussed with the parents/carers.
Accidents and Incidents
No matter how small, any accidents or incidents will be recorded in our accident/ incident book and discussed with you at the end of your child’s session.
Sickness
Parents/carers should try to contact the nursery by telephone by 10:30am to inform staff their child will not be attending. After this time, we will contact you to check everything is okay. Should your child become unwell at nursery we will contact you by telephone and we may ask that you make arrangements for them to be collected. We would only do this if we felt that the child needed to see a GP, have medication or if we felt they were in distress and would be better at home. We take emergency contact numbers during application process so that if we cannot get through to parents, we have another person to go to in the event of an emergency/sickness.
We follow the NHS guidelines and if the staff or children have sickness or diarrhoea, they must remain off nursery until they have not been sick or had diarrhoea for at least 2 days.
Family
Family are central to the overall wellbeing of the child and should be involved in the child’s experiences and development. We work closely in partnership with the families as we feel this is important. Children’s care plans and e-journals are available for families to view at any time to enable them to understand and contribute to their child’s learning. Parent/ carer consultations take place with your child’s key worker to enable us to chat about your child’s progress and development. If at any point, you feel you would like a meeting to discuss anything else, speak with management or your child’s key worker and this can be arranged.
Pre Birth to Three
All Staff working with children under 3 years of age will use the components of the pre-birth to three documents as a planning framework.
Staff will observe children and respond to those observations in assessing children’s developmental needs and interests.
Curriculum For Excellence
The Curriculum for Excellence is a play based curriculum. It offers opportunities for children to learning from first hand experiences. Staff have a good knowledge of desirable learning outcomes and will aim to work with your child through these.
The outcome of the Curriculum for Excellence is that each child attains to be a Successful Learning, Effective Contributor, Confident Individual and Responsible Citizen.
Pre- School funding
Active Kids Day Nurseries are partner provider nurseries and comply with Edinburgh City Council terms and conditions. All funding will be applied for by the nursery.