Our Rooms
Bouncing Beans is a welcoming, safe, self-contained building adapted especially for the under-fives.
We have three rooms that are named Ducklings, Goslings, and Cygnets, in which children are placed according to their age and stage of development.
All rooms are welcoming and homely, with the spaces carefully designed to ensure that children are engaged and feel secure.
Ducklings Room
In our Ducklings room we care for up to six children aged 9 months to 2 years old at each session, with two members of staff. Our Ducklings room staff are highly skilled practitioners and experienced within this age group and all hold a certificate in pediatric first aid.
Our aim is to create a home from home environment where our babies feel safe and secure. We ensure that every child is nurtured with lots of love and cuddles and liase closely with you to ensure their individual needs and routines are met.
There are lots of stimulating activities and resources available, including an indoor crawl in sand pit. Singing and music are part of our daily activities as well as sharing books and favourite rhymes. We also have a separate outdoor garden area for our little Ducklings to explore. To support physical development, from the age of around 18 months, Ducklings can go with their key person into the larger outdoor area.
Your child’s key person will meet you and your child at your home visit where they will gather important information such as your child’s existing patterns and routines, likes and preferences. This is the first step in getting to know your child and their family and ensuring that their transition from home to nursery goes as smoothly as possible. We will also be able to answer any questions or concerns that you may have about your child starting nursery.
Goslings Room
In our Goslings room we care for up to nine children aged two to three years old with two members of staff. Additional staff may be in our Goslings room to support our children with Special educational needs, ensuring that every child can reach their full potential.
Our Goslings room is calm and homely, and our friendly staff ensure that every child is supported to feel safe, happy, and confident. There are a wide range of stimulating activities and resources freely accessible including a home corner and large indoor sandpit. We offer craft and messy play opportunities and mark making materials such as paints and crayons are freely available for our little Goslings to access whenever the creative urge strikes! Children enjoy carpet times with music, singing and interactive story times all of which help to support their language and communication skills. We offer dance and yoga to support physical health and well-being and believe strongly in the importance of children spending as much time as possible outdoors.
We gradually introduce and support children’s independence and self-care skills such as putting on coats, hand washing and toileting.
Cygnets Room
In our Cygnet room, we care for up to thirteen children aged three to five years old with two members of staff. Additional staff may be in our Cygnet room to support our children with Special educational needs, ensuring that every child can reach their full potential.
Our Cygnets room is welcoming and homely, and our friendly staff ensure that every child is supported to feel safe, happy, and confident in their nursery surroundings.
Our pre-school room is equipped with lots of wonderful resources all carefully chosen to ignite curiosity and inspire children to create, discover and learn.
We believe in ‘play-based’ learning and integrate learning activities into your child’s natural play. We do this because we know that an engaged child learns more – and children are always more engaged when you base learning on their own interests and experiences. Our experienced Cygnet room staff provide activities and new experiences for the children creating amazing opportunities both inside and out, to develop and strengthen their skills. We extend the children’s learning and experiences through inviting visitors into the nursery for example Mini Monsters, and occasional visits to places such as the police station and forest schools.
In Cygnet room our staff help to prepare our children for their transition to primary school. Throughout the year the children are supported in developing their independence skills when undertaking self-care routines and tasks such as taking putting on coats and changing shoes. There is also a focus on relationships, social skills, and emotional well-being which children need to thrive and be happy in the next stage of their education. We have great links with all the local schools, and the primary school teachers come into our nursery during the summer to meet the children who will be joining their class in the September.
Our Garden
Outside we have a lovely, secure play area which has a ‘bouncy’ safety surface together with an area of artificial grass. We also have a separate outside play area just for our little Ducklings.
We have a range of open-ended resources to encourage children to be creative within their play. There are wooden planks, crates, tyres, guttering and connectors which the children use in many ways. For example, to make obstacle courses, trains, aeroplanes, and to experiment with the endless possibilities of water. We also have a range of small world resources, role play such as builders’ equipment and dolls with pushchairs, mark making equipment, painting, planters for gardening, a bug hotel, mud kitchen, playhouse, and large timber play tower with slide.
The importance of outdoor play
It is vital for children to have access to the outdoor environment as it contributes to their health and wellbeing. For example, natural light stimulates production of serotonin and vitamin D. Blue light found in natural daylight helps children sleep longer, and the space, freedom and stimulation provided by being outdoors encourages children to move.
Daily fresh air is an integral part of our nursery ethos, and we go outside daily and, in all weathers (unless extremes of weather deem it unsafe to do so). We provide waterproof trousers and jackets for children if they have left theirs at home so that every child can freely access outdoor play whatever the weather. We offer free flow play whenever possible, and children can decide whether they would like to play inside or outdoors.
Children are encouraged and supported by staff to gain the skills to start risk assessing for themselves. For example, when jumping off something, balancing and climbing.