Play & Learn Nursery Sutton Coldfield

An upstairs terrace for the youngest children, a tree-lined garden downstairs and The Den for quieter small-group activities give Play & Learn Nursery Sutton Coldfield several different ways to organise a child's day. The setting has capacity for 62 children aged three months to five years. Its four departments separate the early stages of development, while shared spaces bring opportunities to play beyond the main room.

At its August 2021 inspection, Ofsted rated the nursery Good, judged safeguarding effective and found that children with special educational needs and/or disabilities received effective support through external-agency working and visual communication aids. That is a dated judgement. The current offer combines age-specific care with a literacy room, outdoor play and an onsite SEND coordinator, making the practical organisation of learning and support a useful starting point for families.

Standard and extended days are offered, alongside a funded-hours-only attendance pattern. The differences matter: they affect both the length of the day and how meals are charged.

Rooms and Ages

Baby Room takes children from three to 18 months, pairing sensory exploration through treasure baskets and natural objects with an open-plan first-floor environment and adjoining terrace. For a baby, that puts outdoor activity alongside the indoor day rather than making the downstairs garden the only option.

First Steps serves toddlers aged 18 to 30 months, using books, rhymes, construction toys and a home corner to develop language, coordination and early independence within the upstairs department. Familiar pretend-play resources give children something recognisable to talk about as their vocabulary grows.

Little People, for children aged 30 to 36 months, emphasises storytelling, sensory materials and practical craft in the ground-floor department, with access to the garden and soft playroom. Cutting, gluing and mark making bring hand control into play, while physical activity gives energetic children another outlet.

Pre-School covers 36 to 60 months, combining more structured group learning, phonics and imaginative play with the downstairs garden and a large interactive tablet. Its emphasis on self-help and confidence makes preparation for school broader than recognising letters and numbers.

These departments describe stages, rather than four identical rooms with different age labels. Upstairs, care includes bottle feeding and weaning support; downstairs, children practise greater independence and longer periods of concentration. The change in emphasis is clear.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum provides the framework for learning through play, including language, physical development, early mathematics and creative expression. It is the educational foundation here. The additional spaces show how that learning can be organised: children from babies to preschool use the literacy room in small groups for language and cognitive development, and it also accommodates individual support for children with additional needs.

The Den is a calming room where small groups can explore wooden toys, natural objects, stories and instruments, with yoga and singing among its activities. Children needing additional support can use it with their key person and peers. This gives quieter engagement a place of its own, alongside the busier main departments.

In August 2021, children explored counting through pretend ice-cream purchases and investigated insects found in the garden. Those examples connect number and scientific curiosity to something children can handle and discuss. At the August 2021 inspection, Ofsted also identified insufficient challenge for the most able children and uneven teaching in the older children's room, where less confident children could struggle to contribute to group activities. These are meaningful cautions for parents assessing how group learning works.

Outdoor and Community Life

Outdoor play has several settings. The younger children's terrace includes toys, a little climbing frame and soft mats; downstairs, the garden supports bike riding, climbing, gardening and digging in the bark kitchen. Children can move between active play and slower exploration rather than having every outdoor activity serve the same purpose.

Startwell Birmingham’s healthy lifestyle programme adds an emphasis on exercise and food habits. Through the Startwell Project, staff have learned to build physical games into outdoor play. Food-related activities include taste tables and growing vegetables, bringing healthy choices into hands-on experiences rather than leaving them solely to mealtimes.

Relationships and Communication

Each child has a key person who coordinates care and learning and provides a consistent contact for the family. Sharing information with that practitioner helps connect home routines with nursery life. Two free settling sessions, each lasting one hour, give children and parents time to begin that relationship before regular attendance.

For younger children, sleep is part of the room's organisation. After lunch, Baby Room becomes a sleep space with lowered blinds and calm music; younger babies use cots, while other upstairs children have sleep mats. First Steps provides quiet activities for children who remain awake, recognising that the upstairs children do not all follow the same routine.

Weaning support covers changes from bottles to cups and from milk to solid food. Toilet-training support similarly aims to maintain continuity between home and nursery. These are practical care arrangements with everyday consequences: consistency matters when a child is learning a new routine in more than one place.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

An onsite SEND coordinator can observe children, guide support and make referrals. The literacy room offers individual support, while The Den gives children another space for small-group work with familiar adults and peers. These are specific mechanisms, rather than a general promise that every need can be met.

Staff have paediatric first aid training and receive safeguarding training, and designated safeguarding lead roles form part of the team structure. These arrangements sit alongside the dated safeguarding judgement above. They should not be confused with a fresh inspection assessment.

School preparation includes expressing needs, listening to instructions, sharing and taking turns, as well as early reading, writing and number work. The emphasis is on functional independence and social confidence. For families, that gives a broader picture of readiness than a checklist of academic skills alone.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 66 Anchorage Road, Sutton Coldfield, B74 2PG. Opening hours are 7am to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday, with weekends, bank holidays and Christmas Eve excluded. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 0121 355 3248, email or the enquiry form.

A Standard Day runs from 8am to 5pm; an Extended Day runs from 7am to 6.30pm. The funded-hours-only option uses a 7.30am to 5.30pm day, with one day attached to the 15 hours entitlement and two days to the 30 hours entitlement. Where funding is used within standard childcare packages, the minimum attendance is two days for the 15 hours option and three days for the 30 hours option. These are different booking arrangements, so the funded-only pattern should not be read as interchangeable with the paid packages.

Funding and Paid Extras

The 15 hours Entitlement and 30 hours Entitlement are offered on a stretched basis across 51 weeks, including school holidays. This spreads the annual entitlement across more weeks rather than retaining the term-time weekly allocation. Families using 30 hours funding need to renew their details every three months and keep their eligibility code current.

Meals are cooked onsite, with provision for allergies, intolerances and religious or preference diets. Meals are included in the monthly fee for standard childcare packages, whereas lunch, pudding and a snack carry a separate charge under the funded-hours-only options.

Additional activities can incur separate charges, including trips, cooking, Yoga, a Forest school experience and Christmas pantomimes. Participation is optional, and families receive advance notice when a charge applies. Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation; the funding choices page sets out the package structure.

• Participation and challenge. The August 2021 findings highlighted both children who needed greater challenge and quieter children who needed more help to contribute. During a visit, ask how staff adjust group activities for these different needs.
• Upstairs care and sleep. Baby Room and First Steps share a first-floor department, and sleep routines accommodate children who remain awake. Ask to see how the terrace, resting children and quiet activities are supervised together.
• The funded package. Funded-only days have different times and meal charges from standard packages, while package-based funding carries minimum attendance requirements. Request a written quotation for the exact pattern you want, including whether nappies, wipes and other consumables are supplied or charged.
• Dietary needs. The nursery caters for allergies and dietary restrictions. Families affected by these should confirm current preparation and serving arrangements for their child's specific requirements.

Play & Learn suits families choosing between a standard day, a longer extended day and funded-hours-only attendance, with different care stages extending from babies to preschool children. The terrace, literacy room and The Den give substance to the offer: outdoor access, language work and quieter activities each have an identifiable place.

The Good judgement from August 2021 provides a useful quality reference, but its concerns about challenge and participation deserve equal attention. The strongest fit is for parents who value age-specific care, practical independence and several spaces for different kinds of play, and who are comfortable with the attendance rules of their chosen package.