The Rooms: The Garden Our greatest asset really. Smisby Day Nursery is Unique in the Ashby area.
Set in a quiet rural
location with a large garden surrounded on three sides by fields and gardens populated by horses and chickens we are extremely lucky to have 2 separate playgrounds and 2 garden areas - one of them huge!
Where else would you find that around here?
Playgrounds
Toddler Room and Pre School room have separate playgrounds out the back of the Nursery. We don't keep them apart because they have a gang mentality between them - but because the Pre Schoolers can be boisterous in their play and the poor Toddlers would all spend their time getting up off the floor!
The playgrounds are tarmacadam areas. We toyed with the idea of covering one, or both, with a rubber surface some years ago but feel that by taking all of the risk out of the children's lives we are not helping them to prepare for school life. We believe "gravel rash"
is a risk the children need to know about from an early stage - after all, they will not spend the rest of their lives walking down rubber matted streets!
The children go outside come rain or shine - The only time we do not let them go out is if it is blowing a force 12, and that is only because the neighbours complain if they come home and find their gardens littered with small children and articles of clothing blown off the kids! This is why we will ask you to bring hats, gloves, coats and wellies in the winter - children need fresh air. As one of our staff frequently comments "There is no such thing as bad wearther - just bad clothing choices!"
The Garden areas
A small area at the back of the Pre School playground is usually used in the Spring and Autumn months and contains a lot of Little Tikes play equipment for the children to play on.
In the summer we go down to the lower garden. A large area with a big Weeping Willow tree for shade in the middle, a sand pit, a big shelter we put up in the summer to allow us to have lunch and tea outside, and our magnificent new play equipment.
Professionally installed in Spring 2008 this play equipment was made possible by a grant from Derbyshire Early Years. Without the grant we would not have been able to purchase such a wonderful piece of equipment and we are very grateful for the grant. Made by Rainbow Play Systems this piece of equipment is called the "Sunshine Double Sunny Commercial" and has:
Also within the large grass area there is a Forest School area with seating, fire stand area and all the tools necessary to teach the children woodland craft. We are also very proud of our mud kitchen. Made to measure with 2 cooking areas, four bowls and extensive shelving it is a deluxe mud kitchen - which still gets extremely messy!
The children use the garden extensively in the summer months, sometimes having lunch or tea outside, playing in the paddling pool, sitting in the shaded area or just running around the garden.
We ask that you provide sun hats and suncream during the summer months as the children will be outside for a lot of the time, and whilst there is a lot of shade we do sometimes get enough sun that they could get burnt -so we " Slip, Slap, Slop" when we need to!
Most days in the summer if you come to collect your child after 4pm you will find them all out in the garden.
