The Priory nursery

The Priory nursery is a childcare scheme run by St John Ambulance in Hertfordshire for the local community.

The 26 place nursery offers a happy, stimulating environment for children aged between 18 months and eight years old, and has achieved a 'good' rating in its recent Ofsted report.

Nursery Manager, Sharon Fane, explains more about how the nursery gives the children in its care the opportunity to develop social, emotional, intellectual and physical skills in an environment that will give parents the reassurance that their child is in safe hands whilst they are at work.

‘At The Priory nursery we follow the government’s Early years foundation Stage to track each child’s progress and provide them with a range of activities designed to develop their skills and learning through fun and active experiences.

‘The children are encouraged to get involved in a wide range of activities including crafts, story-telling, role play, wood work, sensory experiences, cooking and much more. We plan our activities from observations on the children and provide experiences that are appropriate and relevant to each individual child.’

The nursery aims to reach into the local community by involving the children’s parents in their child’s progress as much as possible.

Sharon continues: ‘We want to encourage and help parents to be more involved with their child’s learning and do this through a variety of ways so that it can be fitted around people’s work schedules.

‘We hold regular parents evenings as you would expect but we also run information evenings for parents where we invite guest speakers in to speak on a variety of child-related subjects including first aid, messy play, nursery development and how to recognise the signs of childhood illnesses such as meningitis, or anything that parents suggest themselves.

‘We also welcome parents into the nursery to spend time participating in different activities with their children if they wish to do so.’

Depending on the age of the child, the nursery offers a pick-up and drop-off service to Letchmore Road School. Parents are able to drop their child off for breakfast and the nursery will take them to school and pick them up again at lunch time. They will then look after the child until the parents are able to collect them later in the afternoon.

Alternatively the staff will care for the child during the morning and drop them off at the afternoon school session after lunch. The last pick up of the day is 3pm and the nursery offers this service to ensure parents have the peace of mind that their child is cared for all day if they need to work longer hours.  

The nursery has also gone the extra step as far as nutrition is concerned. Working from recipes by Annabel Karmel, an acknowledged nutrition expert, the nursery's on-site, qualified chef prepares well balanced meals using fresh ingredients each day.

In order to give each child the best start in life, the nursery believes it is important to build a bond with each child and one of the ways they do this is by assigning each child a key person. This helps the children to settle in when they first join and means their progress can be properly observed and tracked with feedback given to parents on a regular basis. This also helps the nursery to plan their activities to suit the individuals that attend.

The nursery is Ofsted registered and is currently working towards the Hertfordshire Quality Standard. The nursery is open from 7.30am to 5.30pm each day for 50 weeks in the year. They are closed on bank holidays, for the period between Christmas and New Year, and for the four days following the late spring bank holiday at the end of May.

The nursery offers a NHS discount and sibling discount for parents who have two or more children attending the nursery at the same time.

For further information, or to arrange a time to view the nursery please call 01438 357900 or email us.