Over the past few months, we have been looking at the arrangement of the rooms at nursery and how they could work better for the children. A few weeks ago we therefore took the decision to permanently merge what were the ‘Cocoons’ and ‘Butterflies’ rooms, to create a new ‘Ladybirds’, with a Messy Room and a Quiet Room, and free flow in-between.

There are a number of advantages to merging the rooms;

1. Eliminating the need for a transition from Cocoons to Butterflies, no longer meaning a change in Key Person or environment. Children joining the Ladybirds room will continue with their same Key Person until they are old enough to graduate to the Pre-School Room.
2. Younger children learn from the older children, which we have found extremely beneficial especially in Speech and Language development. The older children have the opportunity to help and guide the younger children, as they would younger siblings in a big family.
3. All children benefit from a bigger and better set of resources, pooled together from both rooms, and there will be more room for each area of learning, for example having one large creative area rather than two small areas, meaning the children are less restricted and more resources can be put out each day.
4. All children benefit from free-flow access to the outdoors.
5. Practitioner’s skills can be utilised better, and information sharing becomes easier and more free-flowing. Team deployment becomes more specialised, allowing staff to use their skill sets, focusing on areas of learning they are most passionate about.
6. Parents will drop off and pick their children off to the same place each day, and welcome areas and storage of outdoor clothing e.g. wellies becomes more spacious and accessible.

The Ladybird Room will be from when your child is a confident walker, until they are 3 and graduate into the Pre-School room. The two rooms in Ladybirds will have:

‘Messy’ Room: 

• Creative station
• Junk modelling
• Mark making e.g. painting and colouring
• Malleable materials e.g. Playdough
• Sensory area
• Sand and water play
• Baking and cooking
• Welly/waterproof area next to garden door

‘Quiet’ Room:

• Book Corner
• Role Play & Dressing Up
• Home Corner
• Music and movement
• Construction area
• Small World
• Soft Play

So far the move seems have been positive and the children have settled in extremely well! We would love to know what you think – let us know by emailing anna@muddybootsnursery.co.uk.