Children attending Barwic Parade Nursery in Selby, Yorkshire, couldn't believe their eyes as they returned after the summer break. Their nursery had been transformed.
Mismatched curtains, a worn brown carpet and hessian-covered walls have been replaced with fresh paintwork, a plush stain-resistant blue carpet and Venetian blinds. Perhaps best of all are all the colourful new toys, equipment and furniture.
It's a dream come true for nursery teacher Melanie Hind, who wrote of her desire for a 'cheerful, bright and inviting' nursery when she entered Nursery World's Nursery Makeover competition.
'The nursery looked tired and sad,' she says. 'There were three different sorts of curtains and two carpets joined together. There was also a mix of colours, with mustard featuring quite strongly - I suppose that was a popular choice when the nursery opened 25 years ago. Most of the fixtures and fittings have been here since then, and despite doing a lot of fund- raising we could never have hoped to raise enough money to make over the whole nursery at once. The children now say we have a new nursery.' Makeover expert Anna Ryder-Richardson from BBC-TV's 'Changing Rooms' came to open the refurbished nursery. She couldn't resist playing with some of the 5,000 package of new resources, kindly donated by Galt, Abingdon Carpets and Lego.
The nursery, which is attached to a primary school, now has an inviting reading corner with scatter cushions and big book displays, a sand and water area, a construction corner with building blocks, trucks and cranes and plenty of role-play equipment and costumes. Melanie says, 'It was just like Christmas when Galt brought the resources. There was box after box of toys and everyone was shrieking as they were unpacked. Galt were very helpful at meeting our needs. We were keen to have post office role-play equipment because there is a post office opposite the nursery and we use them a lot in our topic work.'
Another big hit is 'Wormy', a multi-coloured play tunnel. 'The children could see Wormy from the door when they first arrived back and he caused great excitement,' says Melanie. 'Because it is a small nursery we found it hard to provide physical play opportunities, but Wormy can be used both inside and outdoors.'
Barwic Parade headteacher Mike Cook is thrilled with the makeover results. 'We now have first-class facilities to match the first-class support and teaching,' he says. 'The nursery was really in need of a makeover and we could never have afforded to do so much. Now the money we would have spent on the nursery can be released to be spent elsewhere in the school, so everyone is benefiting from the win.
'This is an area of low employment, a low wage economy and lots of single-parent families. The children at this nursery are deprived of things other children take for granted, so the make-over really means a lot to us all.'
* Look out in next week's Nursery World for details of how you can win the sand and water corner featured in the Nursery World Nursery Makeover Competition.
