Banana Moon Day Nursery Mere Green

A dedicated sleep room, daily outdoor play and biscuit-baking bags to take home give Banana Moon Day Nursery Mere Green a practical character: routines, play and family involvement sit alongside each other. Based in Sutton Coldfield, it accepts children from four months to five years. For parents comparing baby care with preschool preparation, those are different decisions within the same setting.

At its February 2024 inspection, Ofsted rated the nursery Good, judged safeguarding effective and found that children, including those with SEND, made progress from their individual starting points. The detail matters more than the label: younger children practised everyday independence, while the preschool curriculum and communication with preschool parents needed further attention.

Full-day and half-day attendance are both offered. The strongest practical details concern sleep, communication and extending activities into the home; the preschool experience deserves its own discussion rather than being judged solely by the baby provision.

Rooms and Ages

Baby Moons, Teenie Moons, Mini Moons and Full Moons are the Banana Moon group's age-stage names, rather than a promise of four separate physical rooms. That distinction matters when imagining the day: a stage describes the activities and developmental emphasis, while the actual room arrangement may combine groups.

The group-wide Baby Moons approach emphasises sensory exploration through texture, colour and shape, with home routines informing care; Teenie Moons adds painting, songs and messy activities as children become confidently mobile. Mini Moons encourages children to choose activities and manage more of their own personal routines, while Full Moons combines play-led choices with individual learning observations by a key person. These are stages of increasing independence, rather than four identical days with different toys.

At Mere Green, the dedicated sleep room has wooden cots and subdued lighting. It gives babies a separate place to rest, rather than making sleep another activity within the main play space. Personal bed linen is washed on site, and established sleep routines inform the arrangements.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS provides the framework for children's learning, development and care, with play and observation helping staff plan what children do next. Alongside it sits the group-wide Banana Moon Early Learning & Development Programme: children's interests shape activities, open-ended resources encourage exploration, and observations and family communication inform planning. The programme adds a particular way of organising teaching; the EYFS remains the shared framework.

The useful test is what this means in practice. In February 2024, babies explored familiar domestic experiences through home-corner play, toddlers investigated how flour changed their play-dough mixture, and preschool children invented stories during imaginative play. Books and songs also formed part of the day. These examples connect learning with actions children can understand: mixing, choosing, talking and pretending.

Home Learning Bags extend that activity beyond nursery. A biscuit-baking bag gives families an activity to share, with opportunities to talk about ingredients, follow instructions and explore counting and measurement. Families can upload an observation from home, bringing their child's experiences back into the conversation with staff. It is a concrete link between nursery learning and family time.

Home Learning Packs offer another route: families borrow them from reception, return them after use and share photographs through the home-observation function. The value is practical. Parents have an activity to try together and a way to show practitioners what their child does outside nursery.

Outdoor and Community Life

Outdoor play happens daily throughout the year. A secure playground and natural adventure area provide a change from indoor activities, with space for movement and exploration. For a child whose nursery day includes both active play and rest, this makes the outdoor provision part of the routine rather than an occasional extra.

Community involvement has also included a March fundraising challenge for Acorn's Children's hospice, involving families, staff and Full Moons children. That gives the older children's activities a shared purpose beyond the nursery. It is a past example of participation, rather than a recurring trip or a fixed weekly programme.

Relationships and Communication

Settling is flexible, with parents involved in discussing their child's routines and individual needs. For babies, continuity with home is a clear part of the approach. This gives the family a starting point for explaining sleep, comfort and care preferences before nursery attendance becomes familiar.

The Parent App combines routine updates with learning information. Families can see sleep, snacks and activities, follow personalised learning journals, view photographs and send comments from home; access can also extend to nominated relatives. That makes it useful for both everyday handovers and longer conversations about development, although those are different kinds of communication.

At the February 2024 inspection, Ofsted asked the nursery to make preschool learning build more precisely on existing skills and to give preschool parents fuller, more regular developmental discussions and ideas for supporting learning at home. These are specific considerations for families approaching school age. A stream of photographs is useful, but the important conversation is what a child is learning and what comes next.

Reflection points are shared with parents every 6–8 weeks and include ways to support learning at home. This provides a scheduled opportunity to connect observations with next steps, alongside the app's day-to-day updates.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

In February 2024, staff used observations to recognise when children needed additional help and made referrals to outside professionals. A special educational needs coordinator also contributed to discussion of children's support. The mechanism is individual observation followed by additional help, rather than a general promise that every need can be met in the same way.

Sleep procedures are detailed. Cot use covers non-walkers and children under 12 months, and checks take place every five minutes, covering sleeping position, room temperature and potential hazards. Sound and video monitoring stay with a staff member, supplementing those checks. The procedures also require a practitioner to remain in the sleep room when three or more children are asleep, when a baby under six months is sleeping, or when a child sleeps on a mattress bed.

Fingerprint access controls entry, while unregistered visitors wait for a member of staff to admit them. CCTV operates throughout the nursery.

Food is cooked in the nursery's own kitchen, with two hot meals each day, snacks, rotating menus and a separate weaning menu for younger babies. The nursery's dietary policy covers allergies and other requirements, while older children are encouraged to serve themselves, making mealtimes another opportunity to practise independence.

Sessions and Attendance

The nursery opens from 7.30am to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday. Full-day and half-day bookings are offered, with a recommendation of either one full day or two half-days each week; this is a recommendation, rather than a stated compulsory minimum.

Attendance runs across the year, with closures on bank holidays and for a week at Christmas. Fees are payable across 51 weeks, including bank holidays, and remain payable when a child is absent because of sickness or holiday. Those terms matter when comparing the cost of an attendance pattern with the days a family expects to use.

The setting is on Lichfield Road in Mere Green, Sutton Coldfield, B74 4BH. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 0121 3080338 or through the contact form.

Funding and Paid Extras

In February 2024, the nursery provided funded early education for two-, three- and four-year-olds. That is the dated funding position, rather than a promise of an entitlement or attendance arrangement for an individual family today.

Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation. The fees page provides the starting point for a fees enquiry; the charge structure should be considered alongside the absence and bank-holiday terms above.

• Preschool next steps. The February 2024 priorities concerned progression in learning and communication with parents. During a visit, ask to see how a Full Moons child's existing skills shape their next activities and how the reflection points explain this to families.
• Your baby's sleep routine. A separate sleep room and specific monitoring procedures are part of the offer. Discuss how your child's usual nap pattern will work alongside cot use and the circumstances requiring a practitioner to stay in the room.
• The attendance quotation. Full-day and half-day patterns sit alongside charges during sickness, holidays and bank holidays. Request a written breakdown of the proposed funded and private hours, meals and non-food consumables before comparing the total commitment.
• Dietary requirements. The nursery's policy accommodates allergies and individual diets. Families affected by an allergy should confirm current food preparation and mealtime practice for their child.

Banana Moon Mere Green suits families considering either full-day attendance or shorter half-day sessions, with an interest in regular outdoor play, planned sleep arrangements and activities that continue at home. Home Learning Bags and the Parent App give that family involvement a practical form.

The decision deserves an age-specific view. Baby care has detailed routine and sleep arrangements, while preschool families should give equal weight to progression in learning and the quality of developmental conversations. The February 2024 Good judgement provides a dated quality anchor; the daily arrangements and the proposed attendance quotation determine how well the nursery fits a particular family.