The Cottage Day Nursery

We had the best time celebrating National Biscuit Day at Bedford St! 🍪✨

Our little bakers stayed busy with all things biscuits:

🎨 Playdough fun: Rolling, cutting, and decorating.
😋 Taste testing: We tried a variety, (Who guesses bourbons were the clear favourite?)
👩‍🍳 Baking time: We got hands-on making our very own Jammy Dodgers!

It was a wonderful way to learn about the baking process, and the best part was getting to enjoy our delicious creations at the end. Who knew learning could be this tasty?!

👩‍🍳 We are looking for a Lunchtime Assistant/Nursery Cook cover to work within our busy nursery, working 15 hours per week.

😀The ideal candidate will have a passion for bringing smiles to little faces, serving up delicious food and being of assistance to the staffing team.

🍽 Your role will be to support our oustanding nursery team within the unit during dinner times.

⏰ This vacancy is a part-time position across five days (Monday-Thursday) between the hours of 11.00am - 2.00pm, then on a Friday we would need the candidate to cover the nursery cook on her day off.

🫑 This would involve preparing and cooking meals for the children, catering to any dietary or allergies the children may have and making sure all food hygiene procedures are adhered to.

📩 If you think this might be the role for you or wish to discuss further, please forward your CV to Bridget at: [email protected] or give us a call on: 01773 715 726.

How we celebrated Eid across our nurseries! 🌙✨

We’ve had the best time learning about and celebrating Eid together. The children immersed themselves in the celebrations by:

🍲 Cooking and eating a delicious homemade fresh vegetable curry.
📚 Reading stories to understand the meaning behind the celebration.
🎨 Exploring cultural traditions through hands-on, creative play.
💬 Chatting with their friends who celebrate Eid to hear all about their favourite family traditions.

We love creating spaces where our children can learn from one another and celebrate our diverse community! 💛

To celebrate Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday recently, our little explorers at Mickleover got stuck into some serious planet-saving fun.

To name a few activities, we:

• 🌱 Made messy wildflower seed bombs to help our garden buzz!
• 🌊 Learned all about protecting our oceans and keeping habitats plastic-free.
• 🦋 Got up close and personal looking at beautiful butterflies through magnifying glasses.
• 📮 Handcrafted a very special birthday card and marched down to the post box to send it off!

Future conservationists in the making! 🌍💚

Our Mickleover nursery was a total hive of activity for World Bee Day! 🐝

🌸✨ We filled our day with everything bright and buzzy:
🎨 Painting our own little bees
🍪 Decorating (and eating!) yummy bee biscuits
💦 Getting stuck into messy play & busy bee tuff trays
🍯 Exploring gooey honey and learning all about pollination!

We love teaching our little ones how important these tiny workers are to our planet. 🍯🐝

Who knew a few bags of ingredients could spark so much joy? 🍕🥛✨

Our little ones at Heanor have been “cooking up” a storm in the home corner recently.

We love using real ingredients for our imaginative play - it adds that extra layer of sensory learning that toys just can’t match!

From rolling dough, to serving milkshakes and picking out toppings - they get a proper “hands-on” experience while their imaginations run wild!

Our little learners have been so busy exploring these amazing setups at our Heanor nursery lately! ✨ It’s all about creating spaces that spark curiosity and make every day an adventure. We love seeing where their imaginations take them! 🎨

Vibrant Vaisakhi Celebrations! 🧡✨

Our nursery was a sea of colour and learning as we celebrated Vaisakhi last week!

Our little learners dived deep into the traditions of this special Sikh festival. After watching a wonderful clip about the celebrations, we had some fantastic group discussions. We learned all about:

The Nagar Kirtan: Discovering the excitement of big, joyful parades.

The Gurdwara: Learning how Sikhs worship, listen to the holy book being read aloud, and show respect through bowing and offerings.

Community & Food: Understanding the importance of sharing traditional meals together.

Creative Traditions: We were especially inspired by the beautiful, colourful patterns made using rice, lentils, and pasta! 🎉

To top it off, we watched how children prepare for the festivities by crafting their own bright flags and floral decorations to wave during the parades. It’s been a wonderful week of exploring culture, community, and kindness.

Oh, Help! Oh, No! It’s a Gruffalo! 🐾

Taking a look back at our wonderful adventure into the deep dark wood! Our little explorers had a brilliant time diving into our Gruffalo-themed tuff trays, bringing one of our favourite stories to life through sensory play and messy fun.

From "roasted fox" orange textures to "knobbly knees" and "poisonous warts," every tray was a new chapter of discovery. It’s safe to say there’s no such thing as a Gruffalo... but there is such a thing as a fantastic day of learning! 🦉🐍🦊