Life on a farm is special, as the children attending Red Hen Day Nursery fully appreciate. Their setting is situated on a working farm and play and learning outdoors is an integral part of the 'enabling environment'.
The nursery layout enables direct access to the outdoors from each of the five rooms, so all the children, from babies up to kindergarten, are easily able to free-flow into the courtyard. The kindergarten has an additional doorway to its own outdoor play area among mature trees. Practitioners also take children to the paddocks, vegetable garden, nature trails, woodland or adjacent farmland - it's usual to enter the nursery building and encounter very few children. Last year, a further three acres of farmland was taken out of the cropping rotation to provide a nature education area with wetlands and a programme of tree planting, with which the children have been involved.
Nursery director Jane Harrison has completed a degree in early years which has given her the confidence to draw on philosophies mainly from Pestalozzi, Froebel and MacMillan to back up her intuition that children benefit from experiences linked with everyday happenings and the outdoors. She has visited nature nurseries in Denmark to study how the Scandinavian methods worked in practice and has since restructured the pre-school away from formal learning to self-initiated play in nature.
The setting's Early Years Professional, Lucy Harrison, is completing Forest school accreditation as well as having Countryside Educational Visits Accreditation Scheme accreditation to maximise the potential of the farm setting. Experiences include children feeding lambs, managing risks while climbing trees, watching and listening to birds, collecting eggs and observing farm practices such as drilling peas.
Jane says staff have discovered 'there are no situations outdoors that cannot help the children achieve their next steps across the EYFS, but what is also evident is the children's happiness and curiosity inspired by being engrossed in their play.'
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Daisy Chain, Walton, Liverpool
Daisy Chain, a private nursery in a disadvantaged urban area, had limited opportunities for outdoor play until nursery manager Julie White re-thought the provision. By moving the pre-school rooms downstairs she enabled the children to have direct access to the nursery garden and implement quality outdoor play. There is now water play, den-building, crates and imaginative play equipment and children to go to a local forest school every few weeks.
Julie notes, 'The difference it has made to the children has been incredible. They have been able to experience rain, sleet, slush, snow and wind. Children's sickness levels have more than halved in the past 18 months.'
FINALISTS
Blossom House, Stratford St Mary, Suffolk
Caverstede Early Years Centre, Walton, Peterborough
Footsteps Day Nursery and Pre-school, Tamworth, Staffordshire
Kid Ease Nursery, QEQM Hospital, Margate, Kent
Lowdham and Epperstone Pre-school, Lowdham, Nottingham
Nelly's Nursery, West Dulwich, London
CRITERION
Open to early years settings who have developed elements of their provision to create stimulating, child-centred learning environments in line with the principles of the EYFS.
