Jayne's Nursery

We have recently started our journey on the NOF Award. The NOF Award supports early years settings across Essex to implement the new DfE EYFS Nutrition Guidance, creating healthier food foundations for young children and families. The NOF award has been co-created in response to the Nourishing Our Future research (2025), led by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and commissioned by Essex County Council (ECC) Public Health, and in partnership throughout Summer 2025, with local early years settings, ECC Public Health, ECC Education and ARU.
We are passionate about building strong foundations for life long heath, by promoting balanced nutrition, food education and positive mealtimes. By investing our time and resources into this fantastic project, we are supporting all of our children and families towards a healthier future.
The children in our setting already enjoy a varied diet, trying lots of different foods, including seasonal home-grown from our allotment, and foods from different cultures, inspired by our families and staff.
We promote healthy eating and a positive attitude towards food by providing lots of hands-on, real world cooking and educational activities around food, as well as planting our own seeds, looking after our plants, and harvesting regularly, cooking our own produce. We also encourage our families to come and join us on our growing journey.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nofessex/

Within the baby room at Jayne’s Nursery, we make it our priority to ensure the children feel safe and nurtured. We find that fostering a secure and friendly environment allows the children to thrive and develop in all other areas of their development. It is our priority to make sure we are “in tune” with the children, allowing us to respond to their needs with care while supporting them by noticing their cues. We find this helps us encourage their development and ensuring they feel secure and content.
The children are offered opportunities to explore outside areas, where their physical development flourishes as well as providing free flow opportunities to explore in the construction and messy room. Here, children have the opportunity to freely move between the rooms, developing their personal, social and emotional development as well as their confidence within the setting.
In the baby room, children are provided with sensory activities in which they begin their early mark making journey. These creations are displayed on the baby decking on their own personal areas where they can look back proudly on their makings.
We update the room regularly to reflect the current seasonal changes. Here, we embed early literacy opportunities by providing books including things that might be seen during the season. We also include items such as leaves, pine cones and animals that can be spotted at this time of the year, this offers a sensory experience for the children as well as providing opportunities for language development.
The babies are offered many cozy areas around the room in which there is free access to soft books, teddies and cushions. We find this helps the children feeling comfortable and homely whilst with us and therefore allowing them to flourish in our setting.
The other groups within the setting often move through the baby room, meaning the babies in the room develop relationships with the other children and practitioners. We find this helps the babies through different transitions as everyone is familiar to them and they feel confident moving around the setting. This means when it is time for them to move onto the next group, they have been prepared and it becomes an easier adjustment for them!

Today we took our 2.5 year olds to Petersfield to lay their wreath in remembrance of those who were in war. We feel it’s important for children to learn just a little about people that have helped us to have a much better life.

How do we support children's literacy development at the Nature Nursery?
* Lots of story time, free access to books, both adult-led and child-led reading, this helps the children understand that print has meaning & we read text from left to right, page sequencing & learning the names of different parts of the book, as well as learning about Authors & Illustrators.
* Stories in different formats - traditional record player to listen to stories, interactive stories with props, bringing favourite tales to life, stories spoken in different languages & accents
*Developing phonological awareness through regular simple Phonics songs at group time, learning to recognise the first letter of their name, and if the child shows an interest beginning to write familiar letters, first through making marks in sand & mud, and large & small scale mark making.
* Singing new & familiar songs, both in nursery and performing for friends at the Care Home. This boosts confidence & helps to learn new vocabulary.
*Learning that print can be found in a variety of places and it has meaning - shopping, reading instructions and making labels for plants at the allotment.
Literacy is developed through hands-on, nature based activities and experiences which form a strong foundation for starting school.

At our Butlers Farm setting we need more cable reels of all sizes. If anyone has any they no longer need, we would love these for making displays, for physical play and turning them into outdoor seats.
Happy for these to be dropped off at Jayne’s nursery or Butlers farm.
Thankyou.

This term has been very exciting as we welcomed our new group of children to the farm.
We have spent time getting to know each other and our new surroundings, exploring the outside space and especially enjoyed gaining confidence on the swing and the big hill, where we are building strength and muscles as we walk, run and roll down the hill.
We have also discovered how much we love the mud kitchen and making tea parties.
Early in September we watched a mummy & daddy pigeon hatch a baby, feed it and keep it warm, before it finally flew the nest.
We have been harvesting lots of our home grown food from our allotment beds and have been self-sufficient in potatoes, tomatoes and beetroot! We have experimented with cooking foods in different ways inspired by different cultures. Some days we have eaten from bowls we made with banana leaves and other days steamed sticky rice in corn leaves.
We have also been introduced to the fire circle; learning to build, cook and stay safe around the fire.
We are learning new autumn songs which we are due to perform to our friends at the local care home shortly, and of course we have been getting to know Oscar the dog!

Donations:
If anyone has any fitted cot sheets that you no longer use, or some warm children’s coats aged 3-4/4-5 for our spares, we would be extremely grateful and would love to save these items from going into landfill.
Thanks in advance!

In September we are looking to help more families with transporting children in our “party bus” and are looking for a couple more car seats. This time stage 1 car seats that are front or rear facing with a harness, suitable for children under 15kg. If anyone has one that they would like to donate we would be very grateful. Thank you!

Jayne’s nursery is looking for someone with food preparation experience.
There is a new position available at the after school club in the Angel pavilion Monday-Thursday from 2:30 until 6pm.
If you are interested in this role, then please get in touch with Jayne at [email protected] or call on 07950474941