‘The setting was comfortable, furnished to a high standard and welcoming. Careful consideration had been given to the layout of the playrooms to offer a range of spaces for children to make choices, support their interests and develop their ideas.’
Care Inspectorate, 17th May 2024
Nursery facilities in Edinburgh
Our facilities are split across two buildings. Little City caters for our youngest children aged 0 to 36 months, whilst City is set up to receive children aged from 33 months until school age.
Each building has a number of large playrooms, spacious garden areas, a sensory room, sleep rooms, a parents room, offices, a staff room, a kitchen and a laundry room. We also have a state of the art security system which controls our door entry system, has CCTV monitoring of sleep areas at Little City, and allows all the rooms in each building to speak to each other or to a manager.
Little City Nursery for children aged 0 to 36 months
Little City has three purpose built playrooms complete with nappy changing units, a sleep room and a large sensory room equipped with UV lights, a projector, glitterball, bubble tube and fibre optic lights. It also has two outdoor garden areas with small climbing frames, loose parts play, sand and water play, and a variety of outdoor toys. We also have a comfortable parents room which can be used for breast feeding.
Our baby room, Caterpillars, caters for children aged 0 to 18 months and offers a variety of stimulating sensory and age appropriate experiences, including sand and water experiences, loose parts play, a home corner, a story area and a sensory area. It has its own sleep room across the landing with cots and with CCTV and sound monitor.
The Butterflies room is for children aged 19 to 24 months, and the largest playroom is the Busy Bees room for the oldest children at Little City aged 24 to 36 months. Both of these rooms offer loose parts play, sand and water play, crafts and painting, sensory experiences, a story corner, a home corner, construction and small world experiences and have direct garden access.
The ratio of adults to children in our Caterpillars and Busy Bees rooms is 1:3, and 1:5 in our Busy Bees room.
City Nursery for children aged 33 months to school age
Our oldest children are accommodated in our City Building, which has two large playrooms, a quiet room, a large dining room, a large outdoor garden area, a sensory room and comfortable parents room.
The garden area has a mud kitchen, loose parts play, sand pit, and water play, as well as lots of space and resources for physical play and the development of gross motor skills, such as a hammock swing, rope bridge and balancing blocks. We also have an outdoor classroom complete with lighting and heating.
Additionally, we have access to a small woodland area at the rear of the nursery where children regularly go for walks. Children also have the opportunity to go on forest school outings on two days a week at Hermitage of Braid nature reserve. Children visit here to engage with learning in the outdoors and enjoy inspirational, stimulating, hands on outdoor learning experiences including den building, making and playing with swings, hammocks, climbing trees, playing with organic materials, outdoor games etc. They are supported throughout by staff to manage their own risk safely.
The Ladybirds room caters for children aged 2.5 to 3.5 or 4 years, and is bright, and inviting. It has an exciting messy play area offering a number of sensory and creative experiences including sand and water trays, painting easel, playdough table and crafts and gluing table. There is a construction area with block play, and a small world area with cars, a dolls house, dinosaurs and animals, a fun home corner with dolls and a den, a cosy story corner with a selection of age appropriate books, story spoons and puppets, and a mark making table with crayons, pencils, pens, different coloured paper, rulers, etc. Ladybirds room also has a nappy changing station, child sized toilets and sinks and facilities for potty training. The ratio of staff to children in this room is 1:5.
Our largest play room is known as the Early Learners and is for our older children aged 3.5 to 4 years up to school age. This room is our preschool department where we follow the Curriculum for Excellence in conjunction with GIRFEC and Realising the Ambition best practice guidance. Experiences and outcomes are planned responding to children’s interests and learning, and children are able to explore a variety of contexts and experiences through play supported by our dedicated staff team in a safe environment where children are encouraged to learn to manage their own risks.
Facilities include a large ‘messy area’ with sand, water and mixing trays and a playdough table, as well as an art area which a painting easel which can accommodate several children at once, junk modelling, gluing and crafting resources and and a gallery of children’s artwork.
There is also a fun home area with dressing up where children can engage in imaginative role play, and a cosy story corner with a sofa, blankets, story spoons, and age appropriate books where children have opportunities and resources to practice story telling, share their news, and join in with songs and rhymes. In the adjacent quiet room, there are sensory toys, musical instruments, and song spoons and here children can explore group games, singing, dancing, and other expressive and artistic pursuits.
In our literacy area and throughout the Early Learners room we have resources to encourage exploration of mark making and writing including pencils, crayons, felt markers, pens, different colours and sizes of paper and card, envelopes, and other stationary.
In our construction area we have a variety of blocks and other materials available for the children to explore, utilise, create and construct and a spacious construction shed in which to play with these. There is also a small world area with train tracks, cars, animals, dinosaurs and a dolls house.
The ratio of staff to children in this area is 1:8.