Working in a Day Nursery

Man: This is the day nursery where I work at, we’re open 8 til 6, we look after children from about 3 months old to about 4 ½ to 5. It’s set up in four different rooms. We have a Baby room, which is 3 months to a year and then after that they’ve gone up into Tweenies which is from 1 year to 2 years. Then from there they come upstairs to toddlers which is from 2 to 3 years and then hopefully on to Pre-school which is 3 to 4 ½ to 5 depending on what time/age they go to school at.

Woman: Learning, as far as we’re concerned, starts at birth and goes right the way through life so we’re offering children new challenges at every stage of development through play.

Man: Our daily routine is, mainly, they’ll come in the morning, hopefully at 8 o’clock, between 8 and 9.30, we’ll do garden play to start off with, with one group while another group is having snack, then we’ll go up for snack, which is always a healthy option of milk and fruit, their choice.

Woman: We’ll have circle time, group play activity, some structured activities, some not structured and we try to create that balance throughout the day so that children are not being asked to sit down and concentrate for long periods of time.

Man: We’ll go off and do activities, it can be a physical play, it could be water play, it could be any creative play or it could just simply be doing puzzles and playing with cars.

Woman: In our nursery in order to provide a high quality service we have key practitioners and we have nursery assistants, the nursery assistants are in a training position so that they’re not included in staff - child ratios.

Man: The main activities we do is free play, is what OfSTED mainly require from us but it makes the children make the decisions that they want to make and play what they want to so they’re going to get more out of an activity that they want to play with than what we sort of suggest.

Woman: Our staff are constantly updating their training, which raises their self esteem, makes them feel good, makes them feel more in charge of what they’re doing, gives them ownership of their role if you like, within the nursery. And after doing that training we can move them on through the nursery, giving them more responsibility. You’ll have to be prepared to give your all to this job. It’s not the sort of job that you go home at the end of the day and don’t take a little bit of it with you because you’ll be thinking about what you can do tomorrow to make the children happy and make it an enjoyable experience for the children.

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