The Little Den Day Nursery - Basford

🧺Focus Story: Little Red Riding Hood 🧺

Over the next two weeks, the children will be stepping into the magical world of Little Red Riding Hood! ❤️🐺

Through a variety of exciting story-inspired activities, the children will explore the characters, settings, and themes of this much-loved tale. They will have opportunities to develop their language and communication skills, imagination, creativity, problem-solving, and understanding of the world around them.

From retelling the story and exploring woodland adventures to investigating clues and footprints, creating story maps, role-playing favourite characters, and getting creative with arts and crafts, there will be lots of opportunities for learning through play.

We can’t wait to see where their imaginations take them and look forward to sharing their wonderful adventures along the way! 🌿🐺✨

🌊🐠 World Ocean Day 2026 🐠🌊

Today we have been celebrating World Ocean Day and taking time to learn about the amazing oceans that cover much of our planet.

At The Little Den, we believe it is important for children to develop an understanding of the world around them and how they can help to care for it. Through discussions, stories, sensory experiences, creative activities, and exploring sea life, children can begin to learn about the importance of our oceans and the role they play in supporting life on Earth.

Teaching children about sustainability from an early age helps them to develop respect for nature and understand that even small actions can make a big difference. By learning about reducing waste, recycling, and protecting marine habitats, children begin to recognise how we can all help to keep our oceans clean and healthy for future generations. 🌍♻️

Today we will be exploring the wonders of the ocean, discovering fascinating sea creatures, and talking about simple ways we can help protect our blue planet.

Together, we can inspire the next generation to care for our environment and become champions for a more sustainable future. 💚

🌟 Employee of the Month – May 🌟

A huge congratulations to Madie for being awarded our Employee of the Month for May!

Madie has been supporting our team from Chesterton as part of her apprenticeship journey and has settled into Little Den Basford wonderfully. Working closely within our Baby Bears and Bonny Bears rooms, she has quickly built strong relationships with our children, families, and staff team.

Madie is kind, caring, and nurturing, always bringing a positive attitude and enthusiasm to each day. She is eager to learn, embraces every opportunity to develop her skills, and is always willing to lend a helping hand wherever needed. Her dedication, hard work, and commitment to providing the very best care for our children have not gone unnoticed.

We are incredibly proud of everything Madie has achieved so far and are delighted to recognise her efforts with this well-deserved award. 🌟

Thank you, Madie, for your continued hard work, positivity, and for being such a valued member of our Little Den family. We look forward to continuing to support you throughout the rest of your apprenticeship journey and watching you continue to grow and flourish.

Congratulations, Madie💚

Exciting news!!

✨ We’re expanding! ✨

We are delighted to share some very exciting news…

We have added a beautiful new building to our Little Den portfolio, just 32 steps away from our existing thriving Newcastle nursery.

From 7th September 2026, we will have the opportunity to care for our youngest children in our Baby Den, while our older children continue their learning journey in our Big Den.

Our Newcastle nursery will be extending its Ofsted registration to enable us to provide this wonderful new provision.

Both nurseries have their very own private gardens.

Our new building also has extensive natural grounds, where over time we will be creating our very own Little Den Forest School. This will give all of our Little Den children across all of our settings the opportunity to play, explore and learn in a rich natural outdoor environment.

Should you wish for your child to join us on this exciting new journey and you would like to book a visit to come and have a look around, please email [email protected] or call 01782 472092.

We can’t wait to meet lots of new families! 💛

🤎🧸 Teddy Bear Together Day! 🧸🤎

What a wonderful day our children had celebrating Teddy Bear Together Day!

We started with delicious teddy-shaped toast for snack before spending the day dancing with our teddies, singing songs, sharing stories, and enjoying lots of cuddles and giggles with our favourite furry friends. 🧸🎶

The children also got creative with playdough, using their imagination and developing their fine motor skills as they rolled, squashed, and shaped their very own teddy bears. 🤎

To finish our special day, we enjoyed a lovely teddy bears picnic together, making memories with our friends and teddies in the sunshine. ☀️🧺

A huge thank you to our wonderful Claire for organising such a magical together day filled with smiles, laughter, and special moments for our beautiful children.

Written by Hannah- Mini beasts 🐞🐛🦟🪲🪳🐜🕷️
This morning our baby and Bonny bears enjoyed a lovely bug-themed sensory activity in the garden! 🐞🪲🐛

The children explored our “Little Den Bug Hotel,” using magnifying glasses to investigate the different bugs, textures and natural materials. They showed lots of curiosity as they pointed to the insects, dug in the soil and discovered where bugs might like to hide and live.

A very exciting moment was when we found a real worm in the garden! The children were fascinated watching it wriggle around. This was supported with lots of early language by talking about how it moved and where it lives.

Activities like this help to encourage curiosity, sensory exploration and early understanding of the natural world, while supporting communication and fine motor skills through hands-on play. 🌿🔍

We had such a wonderful morning exploring together! 💚

✨🪩 Sparkles, Scrunches & Sounds 🥁✨

Our Baby and Bonny Bears have had a wonderful time exploring a shiny, metallic-themed sensory experience full of exciting textures and sounds 💛

The children were fully engaged as they explored reflective and crinkly materials such as foil, shiny fabrics and metal objects. Using their hands to touch, scrunch and investigate, they discovered how each texture felt, supporting their early sensory development and sparking natural curiosity ✨

We also introduced a range of pots, pans and kitchen utensils, giving our little ones the opportunity to explore sound-making. Through banging, tapping and dropping, they experimented with different noises, helping them to understand cause and effect 🥁

🌸🌼 Spring Playdough 🌼🌸

Written by our wonderful Ebony- Our Baby and Bonny Bears have enjoyed exploring a spring themed play dough invitation to play! They explored the play dough alongside loose parts and materials such as flower petals, pine cones, and pipe cleaners as we promoted creativity.

This supports..

• fine motor skills - using rolling pins, making marks using pine cones and fingers, and using pincer grasp to sprinkle petals

• creativity - providing a variety of materials allowed our children to explore freely, supporting open ended play

• communication and language - our Baby and Bonny bears have been introduced to lots of new vocabulary, such as petal, flower, repeating words such as ‘roll’!

✨ Our Senses ✨✋🏼👂🏼👃🏼👀

Our Baby and Bonny Bears had a wonderful time exploring their senses through play 💛

We provided a variety of exciting objects that encouraged the children to explore different sounds, tastes, smells, textures, and visuals. From feeling new textures to discovering interesting sounds, the room was full of curiosity and delight!

These rich sensory experiences support early development and help our little ones begin to understand the world around them in a fun, engaging way 🌈

Happy Easter from The Little Den Day Nursery Basford 🐣

We’ve had a wonderful week filled with exciting Easter activities, laughter and lots of smiles! From creative crafts to sensory play and Easter-themed fun, the children have truly enjoyed every moment.

Thank you to all our children and families for being part of such a special week, we hope you have a lovely Easter together 🐰