Nurtured Nursery St Winnow

A wooded Top Garden, a baby gym and nursery-level phonics give Nurtured Nursery St Winnow a recognisable character: plenty of physical exploration, with quieter spaces and preparation for school alongside it. Based at St Winnow School in Lostwithiel, it combines gardens connected to the rooms with practical support for children’s individual routines. Outdoor play is part of the daily offer.

Ofsted rated the nursery Outstanding at its 17 January 2023 inspection. That is a dated judgement, while the current offer includes weekly Forest School sessions, a key person for each child and learning journals that families can keep. These are useful points of substance for parents weighing how a child’s day will work, beyond the overall grade.

The nursery accepts children from 3 months, with an upper age limit of 60 months and capacity for 57 children in total. Full-day care is offered across the year. Babies, toddlers and preschool children have different spaces and experiences, rather than an identical day scaled up or down by age.

Rooms and Ages

The baby room combines space for eating, sleeping, exploring and play. Elsewhere within the babies’ provision, a gym has steps and a ramp, alongside a dedicated sleep area and somewhere quiet for books. These give babies opportunities to practise movement while also allowing for rest. The garden is readily accessible, with water and sand for hands-on exploration.

Toddlers have a large room with creative materials; the adjacent sensory room also serves as a separate sleep room after lunch when needed. Their activities include dancing, singing, construction and making marks, with regular yoga adding another way to explore movement. A toddler who still needs a daytime sleep has a specific space for it.

Pre School combines organised learning with play, including early English and maths, creative activities and practical independence. Its garden has scooters and bikes, water activities, construction materials and a sand pit equipped with tools and diggers. The emphasis extends beyond sitting and listening: movement, investigation and making things have a place too.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS provides the framework for children’s learning, development and care, with play supporting creativity and thinking. Nurtured’s approach emphasises exploration and discovery: children try things, make connections and develop language and maths through activities that engage their interests. That gives parents a clearer picture of the day than a curriculum label alone.

Read Write Inc is the named addition for preschool children preparing for primary education. Here, the nursery-level programme supports early phonics. It sits alongside painting, construction, singing and opportunities to listen, take turns and express ideas, rather than defining the whole preschool experience.

In January 2023, a picture-card activity prompted a conversation about a cow’s udder, followed by later discussion of drinks and food. The example shows how an immediate interest could lead into vocabulary used again in another context. During the same month, older children used knives to prepare fruit and spread butter at snack time, then cleared their cups and plates. Ordinary routines became opportunities to practise doing things for themselves.

Outdoor and Community Life

Top Garden is the nursery’s forest school area, with woodland, climbing equipment, swings, tunnels and a mud kitchen. Toddlers also visit horses in the neighbouring field. These are concrete differences between outdoor time here and a day centred on indoor resources: there is space for climbing, shared play and contact with the natural surroundings.

Weekly Forest School sessions add outdoor learning through exploration of nature; preschool sessions include learning about fire safety. Daily outdoor play also includes den building, team games and growing plants and vegetables in the pre-school vegetable plot. Frequency matters here: Forest School is weekly, while outdoor play belongs to the daily routine.

All rooms open onto their own gardens, giving children a choice between activities indoors and outside throughout the day. In January 2023, babies explored snow through footprints and touch, while toddlers made and threw snowballs. That dated example illustrates how weather itself became material for learning, rather than simply determining whether children went outside.

Relationships and Communication

Each child has a key person who follows their learning and development closely. A Learning Journal brings together photographs and observations, is accessible to parents and goes home with the family when the child leaves. It provides a continuing account of nursery life rather than relying solely on a brief conversation at collection.

Settling sessions involve parents before their child starts, giving staff time to learn about the child. Babies’ individual routines are maintained through continuing discussion with families, with settling time adjusted to what the baby and parents need. Daily conversations with staff provide another opportunity to exchange information and discuss the child’s experiences.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

The SENCo coordinates support across the nursery and involves parents in agreeing outcomes, interventions and review dates. For a child with additional needs, the starting arrangements include gathering existing professional reports and creating an Individual Learning Plan; a Care Plan and risk assessment are added where necessary. Settling sessions are arranged around the staff and children the child will encounter in their chosen sessions.

At the January 2023 inspection, Ofsted judged safeguarding effective and support for children with special educational needs exceptional, including communication supported by gestures, pictures and symbols and joint work with families and professionals. Those findings belong to that inspection. Today’s support arrangements give parents a defined role in discussing concerns and reviewing the help their child receives.

Food is prepared from scratch on site by the nursery chef, with fruit and vegetables supplied by Richard’s in Par and meat sourced from a butcher in Tywardreath. Two meals each week are entirely plant based, and children eat at tables with staff, making meals a shared part of the day.

Sessions and Attendance

Full-day care runs across the year, and the nursery opens from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, for 51 weeks. It closes on bank holidays and for a week at Christmas. This provides a clear annual pattern for families organising work and childcare, while the daily opening window gives the outer limits of the nursery day.

Getting There

The address is St Winnow School, Grenville Road, Lostwithiel, PL22 0RA. The nursery is next to the A390, a practical location for families travelling between St Austell and Plymouth.

Enquiries can be made by telephone, email or the contact form. Because the nursery is based at St Winnow School, families should keep childcare and Reception admissions separate: attending the nursery does not guarantee a school place, and applications for a state-school place go through the local authority admissions process.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded childcare is offered for children aged 9 months to 4 years who meet the government’s eligibility criteria. Funding is mainly delivered across the year, with 22 hours a week stretched over 51 weeks. That pattern is relevant to parents seeking continuity through the year, rather than concentrating entitlement into school terms.

Private full-day childcare is also offered. Current prices come in the nursery’s written quotation, and the nursery has updated its terms and conditions for 2026.

• Year-round funding. Funded hours are mainly stretched across 51 weeks. Consider how that distribution fits your working year and the additional childcare you need.
• Your child’s outdoor day. Weekly Forest School, the wooded Top Garden and gardens adjoining the rooms make outdoor activity a substantial part of the offer. On a visit, discuss how these experiences are adapted for your child’s stage of development.
• Individual support. Additional-needs arrangements include an Individual Learning Plan and discussion with the SENCo. Families already working with professionals can use that meeting to connect existing support with the nursery day.
• The full cost of attendance. Terms and conditions were updated for 2026. When reviewing the written quotation, ask how meals and non-food consumables are treated within funded hours and private childcare.

Nurtured Nursery St Winnow suits families seeking year-round full-day childcare with substantial outdoor activity, individual settling arrangements and a clear progression towards greater independence. The baby gym, toddler sleep provision and preschool phonics programme give the different stages their own character.

Its January 2023 Outstanding judgement is a useful historical benchmark. For the present-day choice, the strongest practical details are the gardens connected to each room, weekly Forest School, continuing parent communication and a structured route for agreeing additional support.