Welcome to Daven Nursery: Seedlings
At Daven Primary, our nursery is known as Seedlings because this is where every child's learning journey begins. Just as a seedling grows and flourishes when given the right care, nurture, and opportunities, we provide a warm, supportive environment where children can develop confidence, independence, and a lifelong love of learning.
Our vision is to empower children to take on the world with confidence. At the heart of everything we do are the school's core values of being brave, kind, and curious. These values are woven throughout nursery life and help our children develop positive relationships, resilience, and a willingness to explore and learn.
We are proud to offer a dedicated two-year-old room, a separate learning space designed specifically for children aged 2-3 years. This open-plan environment has been thoughtfully arranged to encourage learning through play and exploration. Children can access a wide range of engaging areas, including role play, small world play, a cosy story area, block play, mark making, creative activities, sensory experiences, and an outdoor mud kitchen. These carefully planned opportunities allow children to learn, discover, and grow at their own pace.
Like the rest of our school, where each class is named after a tree, Seedlings represents the very beginning of a child's journey within our school family. From these first roots, children are supported to grow into confident learners, ready to flourish as they move through our tree-named classes.
Once children turn three, they transition into our Acorn Class (Preschool and Reception), where they continue to build upon the foundations established in Seedlings. As part of this transition, children are encouraged to develop increasing independence, and being toilet trained before joining this provision is preferred where possible. Our experienced team works closely with families to ensure that every child's move into the next stage of nursery life is smooth, positive, and successful.
Our Seedlings Class is run day-to-day by a team of dedicated nursery practitioners, each bringing a wealth of expertise and experience to meet the individual needs of every child. Strategic leadership and direction are provided by Jenny Gosling, Headteacher, alongside our highly experienced Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Lead, ensuring that children receive the highest quality early education and care.
Children are encouraged to take part in a wide range of stimulating and enjoyable learning experiences that prepare them for future success in school and beyond. These include speech and language development, gross and fine motor activities, early mark making and pencil control, maths and literacy experiences, collaborative group activities, and opportunities to develop social and emotional skills. Through a balance of adult-led learning and child-initiated play, we ensure that every child is challenged, supported, and inspired.
At Seedlings, we are committed to helping every child gain the very most from their nursery experience. By nurturing their natural curiosity, celebrating their individuality, and encouraging them to be brave, kind, and curious every day, we help children develop the confidence and skills they need for a smooth, joyful, and successful start to school life.
We don't need to venture far to explore wildlife as we have an exceptional forest school area on site, that our nursery pupils can access (as well as the indoor and outdoor provision). This corner of woodland provides time and space for children to appreciate the awe and wonder of the outdoors – they have the freedom to explore this space all year round, in all weathers. The forest school area develops life-long skills too; our children learn how to problem solve, be creative, work together and develop independence skills.
At the bottom of this page, you can find our Relationships and Behaviour Policy for Nursery.
From tiny seedlings grow strong roots, flourishing branches, and confident learners. 🌱🌳
