Ashbourne Day Nursery at Grantham

Little builders at work! 🧲✨

Our toddlers had a fantastic time exploring, creating, and problem-solving with magnetic blocks today. From colorful towers to imaginative structures, every build encouraged creativity, fine motor development, and teamwork.

It's amazing to see their confidence grow as they experiment, discover, and bring their ideas to life—one block at a time! 💡🌈

🚽 Potty Training Support at Nursery 🚽

At our nursery, we like to introduce the concept of potty training long before children are ready to begin using the potty themselves.

We always have a potty available in our rooms, not for children to use, but to help them become familiar with seeing a potty as part of their everyday environment. We also have a variety of different potties and child-friendly toilets available to support children as they progress on their potty-training journey.

To help children understand and become comfortable with the idea of potty training, we use PECS cards, Makaton signs, social stories, core stories, and a range of books. These resources help build children's understanding, communication, and confidence around this important milestone.

We also work closely with families and have potty-training booklets available for parents to take home, providing helpful tips and guidance to support a consistent approach between home and nursery.

Every child develops at their own pace, and we're committed to making potty training a positive, supportive, and confidence-building experience for everyone. 🌟

Jess was in the kitchen chopping the vegetables for our soup for dinner when one of the children asked, “Jess, what are you doing?”

Jess explained that she was cutting the vegetables ready for our soup. The child then asked if he could help with the cutting too. Jess said, “Of course, but first we need to wash our hands!”

After washing our hands, we all sat down together and soon some of our friends joined in too. The children helped to cut tomatoes, peppers and celery, and we even peeled garlic!

The children really enjoyed helping to make their own dinner and were so proud of what they had created together. 🥣🥕🍅

Problem solving in the main room today! ❄️🧊

“Oh no, our water froze!” The children worked super hard to find different ways to melt the ice. We explored using spoons, hammers, warm water, and even salt to help break and defrost the frozen water.

Throughout the activity, the children used lots of wonderful language including “frozen”, “melt”, “defrost”, “cold”, “hot”, “full”, “empty”, and “more”.

It was fantastic to see the children experimenting, investigating, and working together to solve the problem while having lots of fun! 💙

Today in the baby room, we have been making cosy beds for our teddies. 🧸💤

The children went over to our cosy station to choose some blankets and then tried their hardest to make a bed for their teddy bears. They loved tucking them in and making sure they were nice and comfortable ready for sleep.

This activity encouraged caring behaviour, imagination, and problem-solving skills while having lots of fun together. 💛

Today in our toddler room, the children have been busy making nurse hats after a lovely conversation about people who help us. 🩺👩‍⚕️

While playing in the small world area, the children began talking about doctors, nurses, and caring for others. We followed their interests by creating our very own nurse hats, encouraging imaginative play, creativity, and discussions about helping people in our community.

It has been wonderful to see the children using their hats in role play and showing kindness and care towards their friends. 💙

👋✨ Meet the Team ✨👋

We’re delighted to introduce Leigh, our amazing Deputy Manager! 💛

Leigh plays a key role in supporting the day-to-day running of our nursery, always ensuring that children, families, and staff feel supported and cared for. She is passionate about creating a safe, nurturing, and engaging environment where every child can thrive. 🌱

With a wealth of experience in Early Years, Leigh brings warmth, dedication, and a real commitment to high-quality practice. She is always on hand to support the team and ensure our nursery continues to deliver the very best for our children. 📚✨

We are so lucky to have her as part of our team! 💛

Safe Sleep at Ashbourne Day Nurseries 💛
At Ashbourne Day Nurseries, keeping children safe while they sleep is a top priority. We follow clear safer sleep practices to give families peace of mind.
Our team ensures:
• A member of staff is always present with sleeping children
• Sleep checks are carried out every 10 minutes, getting close to each child to monitor chest movement
• Babies are placed on their backs to sleep
• Cots are kept clear – we remove bobbles, clips, dummy clips, and hooded clothing
• Room temperature is carefully monitored
• We use breathable cellular blankets
• Bedding is washed regularly and stored in individual sleep bags for each child
All staff follow our safer sleep policy, and we are committed to continuous learning. As part of our recent staff meeting, the team attended a Tigerlily Safer Sleep webinar and took time afterwards to reflect on our practice together.
If you’d like to know more about our safer sleep procedures, please speak to a member of our team

📚✨ Thank You for Following Our Core Story Announcements ✨📚

We hope you have enjoyed discovering our Core Stories!

Each of our Core Stories has been carefully thought out by myself and the team to ensure we are capturing all children’s interests and supporting their individual learning journeys. 💛

We are really proud of the variety of stories we share, supporting language, emotions, wellbeing, safeguarding, imagination, and much more across our nursery.

All of our Core Stories are also available to take away and read at home from our nursery library 📖

We’d love to know… which one will you be reading first? 👀✨