Sandy Bears Nursery & Pre School Cholmondeley

A Forest Garden with a bug hotel, buggy outings around Cholmondeley and daily phonics give Sandy Bears Nursery & Pre School Cholmondeley a recognisable mix of outdoor exploration and early learning. Its Castle Farm setting shapes the day: toddlers can visit the farm shop, while preschool children grow plants and use a composter. Nature is something children handle, investigate and care for.

Ofsted rated the nursery Good on 25 March 2025. The setting has 51 places in total and accepts children from birth to 10 years, with its nursery rooms organised around babies, toddlers and preschool children. Koala Bears starts from 3 months and runs to approximately 2 years; Panda Bears serves toddlers and Polar Bears serves preschool children. Those room stages matter more to the nursery experience than the wider accepted age range.

The strongest practical details are the individual baby routines, daily updates through Famly and the variety of materials children can explore. The balance needs scrutiny too: in March 2025, background distractions affected listening during some activities, and teaching needed more precise steps for different ages.

Rooms and Ages

Koala Bears combines sensory exploration and floor activities with a quieter space containing blankets, cushions, books and support rings; its hard flooring and rugs accommodate both messy activities and rest. Babies can explore pine cones through painting, investigate soil or scoop food materials, giving them different textures to touch and movements to try. Daily floor activities include tummy time and baby yoga.

Panda Bears brings together construction, imaginative play and sensory discovery, with wooden blocks, industrial materials, a book area and a home corner. Moving large objects gives toddlers a reason to cooperate, while loose parts, textured paper and threading materials offer smaller tasks for hands and fingers.

Polar Bears adds construction, early maths, literacy and creative work through books, blocks, boxes, tubes and loose materials. Pine cones, pasta and sticks support counting and patterns; the Literacy Area accommodates early writing and letter formation.

Learning and Activities

The curriculum is based on the EYFS, which brings learning, development and care together through play and everyday experiences. At Cholmondeley, that means practical materials, conversation, movement and early writing sit alongside adult-led activities. The framework is the foundation; the detail lies in how the rooms organise those experiences.

Daily phonics in Polar Bears draws on the Read, Write inc programme, giving preschool children recurring activities involving sounds as part of preparation for school. Makaton is introduced to support communication through signs, including alongside songs and stories in Koala Bears. Panda Bears and Polar Bears display signs so families can recognise them at home. Singing and music-making take place daily, with instruments available for children to explore.

In March 2025, babies investigated textured food materials during animal-themed sensory play, toddlers made marks using flowers dipped in paint, and preschool children used accessible writing materials. However, welcome-group activities did not consistently match children's developmental stages, and the teaching sequence needed smaller steps so children could build on what they already knew.

Outdoor and Community Life

Panda Bears has daily outdoor play with a mud kitchen, musical wall and construction materials. Its Forest Garden includes planting space and a bug hotel, providing concrete subjects for investigation rather than treating outdoor time solely as exercise. Walks around Cholmondeley include woodland foraging, open fields and visits to the farm shop on site. No frequency is attached to those outings.

In Polar Bears, Homegrown is the planting area within the Forest Garden, where children grow flowers, herbs and vegetables and recycle material through the composter. Koala Bears also has daily opportunities outdoors, with buggy walks around the grounds when cold weather makes sitting outside unsuitable. Weekly Forest School sessions are led by a Forest School teacher, adding recurring outdoor learning to the room activities.

Relationships and Communication

Baby care is organised around the routine families use at home. Koala Bears offers mats, cots and sleep pods according to children's preferences, with individually allocated sheets laundered on site. The value is practical: sleep can follow a baby's needs rather than waiting for a single group rest time. Nappy changes happen every 2 hours and whenever needed between those times.

Famly carries Koala Bears updates on food, drinks, sleep and nappy changes throughout the day, alongside the key worker's observations in each child's Learning Journey. Panda Bears and Polar Bears also use the app for daily information and messages. Verbal exchanges complement those updates, helping families share changes in eating, sleeping or development rather than relying only on photographs of activities.

In March 2025, staff responded promptly to babies becoming hungry or tired and helped new babies settle with close physical reassurance. Parents were invited to informal meetings about their children's care and learning. These are useful examples of the relationships behind the routines, rather than simply a description of the communication system.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the March 2025 inspection, Ofsted found safeguarding effective and additional-needs support effective, with staff identifying needs and working with other professionals. The current team structure includes a SENDCo role held alongside the manager's role, and intervention support within Polar Bears. That gives families specific roles through which to discuss support for their child.

Independence was visible in March 2025: younger children practised using cups and washing hands, while older children served lunch and put on wellington boots. Staff also modelled manners, sharing and care for equipment. These everyday tasks gave children chances to practise doing things for themselves before school.

The cook prepares meals in the nursery kitchen, and food consistency is adapted to a child's developmental stage, with a weaning plan possible in Koala Bears. Families supply bottles and the formula powder or labelled breast milk their baby needs; they may also supply particular brands of nappies or wipes.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is Unit 6, Castle Farm, Cholmondeley, Malpas, SY14 8AQ. Opening hours are 7.30am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, across the year, with closures for bank holidays and a week at Christmas. This opening window is useful for judging whether the setting fits a working day, while the baby's room routine can accommodate the pattern followed at home.

Enquiries can be made through the Cholmondeley online enquiry form, by telephone on 01829 720 000 or by email to enquiriessandybearscholmondeley@hotmail.com. Visits can be arranged through the room enquiry route. The nursery rooms serve successive developmental stages, with Koala Bears covering the youngest children and Polar Bears the preschool stage.

Funding and Paid Extras

Government-funded childcare was offered in March 2025. Families should obtain a current written quotation for their proposed attendance, keeping childcare charges separate from the items they supply for their baby. In Koala Bears, families apply sun cream and supply suitable clothing for the weather, as well as their baby's formula or breast milk and bottles. These preparations matter because outdoor time and individual feeding routines are part of the day.

• Listening and teaching steps. In March 2025, distractions interrupted some group learning, and activities needed clearer progression for different ages. During a visit, ask how quieter story times and age-appropriate teaching steps now work in Panda Bears and Polar Bears.
• Baby routines. Koala Bears follows home routines and offers several sleeping options. Discuss how your child's preferred sleep arrangement, feeding pattern and weaning plan would be handled together.
• The whole attendance cost. For the hours you need within the 7.30am to 6pm opening window, ask for a written breakdown covering the booking pattern, funded entitlement, food and nursery consumables alongside the baby supplies you bring.

Sandy Bears Cholmondeley suits families who value daily outdoor experiences, hands-on materials and close communication about baby care. Koala Bears offers individual routines and varied sensory activities; Panda Bears and Polar Bears extend that experience through construction, planting, music and early literacy. The Forest Garden and surrounding Cholmondeley grounds give those activities a clear sense of place.

The March 2025 Good judgement sits alongside two useful reservations: children's listening during group activities and the precision of teaching for different stages. Families weighing this setting should look closely at those practices, while considering how the year-round opening hours and home-based baby routines fit their own needs.