Hopscotch Preschool

Parley Common gives Hopscotch Preschool an outdoor life beyond its playgrounds. Small groups explore the heath, while a Nature Garden, vegetable garden and separate outdoor spaces for each room bring outdoor play into the everyday offer. This is a Ferndown setting with a clear emphasis on children choosing, investigating and gradually doing more for themselves.

Ofsted rated Hopscotch Good at its 6 March 2023 inspection. The preschool welcomes children from 3 months until school age and has 68 places in total, with babies, toddlers and older children spending their days in age-specific rooms. Its Community Interest Company structure means profits go back into equipment and resources, giving the setting a practical connection between its finances and children's surroundings.

Families can choose morning, afternoon, preschool-day or full-day attendance, with term-time and year-round options. That breadth matters: the offer accommodates both shorter preschool sessions and care covering a working day, rather than expecting every family to use the same timetable.

Rooms and Ages

Little Raindrops Room serves children from 3 months to 2 years, combines age-appropriate resources with an aim to follow home routines, and has its own covered outdoor space, allowing babies' care and outside play to sit alongside familiar patterns.

Rainbow Room, for ages 2 to 3, combines child-chosen play with activities shaped around individual interests and development, with access throughout the session to a large outdoor area surfaced in rubber soft play material.

Sunshine Room serves ages 3 to 5, adding phonics and listening during organised carpet sessions to free play and planned activities, while everyday tasks such as managing coats and pouring drinks give independence a practical purpose.

The building has three classrooms with separate outdoor play areas. This makes outdoor access part of each room's arrangement rather than an activity confined to one shared garden. The progression between rooms also has a clear purpose: familiar routines for the youngest children, interest-led activity for toddlers, then greater responsibility as school approaches.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS sets the framework for children's learning, development and care, including communication, physical skills and social and emotional development alongside areas such as literacy and maths. Here, play provides the route into learning: practitioners plan from children's interests and developmental stages, rather than treating the framework as a list of lessons to complete.

In March 2023, mathematical learning included exploring size and quantity, while older children searched for numbers outdoors and retold stories. Babies investigated sensory materials and shared books with adults. These examples show how learning could move between conversation, objects and physical activity, rather than depending on children sitting together for prolonged instruction.

Language was also an improvement priority in March 2023. Adults responded to babies' sounds and introduced vocabulary to older children, but sometimes moved on too quickly after asking a question. Giving children longer to form an answer matters because participation involves thinking as well as hearing an adult speak.

Outdoor and Community Life

Forest School adds hands-on exploration in natural surroundings alongside the EYFS. Hopscotch uses its Forest School garden classroom and Parley Common, with activities shaped around children's curiosity; small-group heath visits emphasise communication, teamwork and confidence. Staff with Forest School training support this outdoor offer.

A mud kitchen and mini beast hotel give the garden classroom concrete points of interest. Children can investigate living things or use materials imaginatively, while the vegetable garden provides another setting for encountering the natural world. The Nature Garden adds a further outdoor space alongside each room's own play area.

The heath is a substantial part of the setting's character, but it is not the whole outdoor offer. Babies have covered space attached to their room, and the classroom outdoor areas can be used for much of the day. For families who value outside play, that combination matters more than an occasional special outing: outdoor experiences can take different forms as children grow.

Relationships and Communication

Every child has a key person responsible for tracking learning, maintaining development records and supporting changes between experiences. Parents therefore have a particular member of staff to discuss their child's next steps with, rather than relying only on general messages from the setting.

Evidence for Learning is the online learning journey used to share children's experiences with families. Parents can view entries, add comments and contribute moments from home, creating a two-way account of what a child is learning. Three parents' evenings each year provide a separate opportunity for discussion, with alternative appointments possible when the offered dates do not work.

Settling sessions take place in the child's room, and parents can remain while their child gets to know the surroundings and key person. Hour-long sessions are recommended. An optional home visit offers another way to introduce staff to a child's routines before nursery begins, which may be useful where feeding, comfort or transitions need careful discussion.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the March 2023 inspection, Ofsted judged safeguarding effective and praised SEND provision, including collaboration between the special educational needs coordinator, families and other professionals, help obtaining support and funding, and training for children's medical and learning needs. These are dated findings, but they give parents concrete mechanisms to discuss rather than a general promise of inclusion.

In March 2023, picture cues helped children handle changes and understand time, while adults dealt with behaviour calmly and consistently. A sensory room supported emotional needs. The current settling arrangements and key-person system give families clear opportunities to explain what helps their own child feel comfortable and understood.

Personal hygiene required improvement in March 2023: staff did not consistently help children with colds or teach older children to manage this hygienically themselves. Dental care has a concrete place in the current routine, with children brushing after meals using a toothbrush supplied by Hopscotch. The distinction matters: having a routine for one aspect of hygiene does not answer the earlier concern about another.

Parents supply packed lunches; fruit snacks, milk and late tea are included, and the nursery's allergy policy is to exclude foods and drinks parents identify as unsuitable for their child. Bottle-feeding and weaning arrangements for babies can be planned jointly with families.

Sessions and Attendance

The Day session runs from 8am to 6pm, the AM session from 9am to 1pm, and the PM session from 1pm to 4pm. The Preschool day runs from 9am to 4pm. These are different booking patterns, giving parents a choice between shorter attendance and a day extending beyond preschool hours.

The Preschool day can be extended with Breakfast club from 8am to 9am, including breakfast, or additional hours from 4pm to 5pm and 5pm to 6pm, with tea included in the latter. Short-notice ad hoc bookings are also offered by the hour. Families can therefore consider both the central preschool day and the add-ons needed around work or other commitments.

Hopscotch opens for 50 weeks, with a term-time option as well as year-round attendance. Bank holidays and a two-week Christmas closure apply to the year-round arrangement. Choosing holiday attendance extends care beyond school terms, but families still need to account for those closures.

Getting There

The address is Barns Road, Ferndown, Dorset, BH22 8XH, with the main entrance behind Heatherlands Community Centre and parking outside. Enquiries can be made through the contact form, by email or by telephone on 01202 870759.

Funding and Paid Extras

Hopscotch accepts two-year-old funding, 15 and 30 hours for three- and four-year-olds, and the 30-hour entitlement for children aged 9 months to 2 years. Funding can be used term-time only or stretched across holidays; stretching spreads the entitlement over a longer period, reducing the funded hours usable each week.

Two- and three-year-old funding is restricted to 9am to 4pm, while the younger children's 30-hour funding can cover the 8am to 6pm nursery day. This distinction matters when matching funded hours to a booking: the same attendance pattern may contain private hours for one age band and funded hours for another.

Additional attendance beyond funded hours is charged privately. Hopscotch applies no top-up or extra charges, including on funded attendance: parents provide lunch and spare nappies, while snacks, late tea, water bottles and toothbrushes are included. There is no joining registration or administration charge; current prices come in the nursery's written quotation, and the fees and funding page explains the charging structure.

Invoices cover complete weeks rather than calendar months and are payable by the first of the month. For families buying additional hours, that means monthly bills can cover different numbers of weeks. Funded attendance alone generates no invoice unless additional hours are used.

• Funding and the working day. The funding window for two- and three-year-olds is narrower than the Day session. At a visit, discuss how your child's entitlement fits the AM, PM or Preschool day pattern and any additional hours you intend to book.
• Communication and hygiene. The March 2023 improvement priorities concerned allowing time for answers and consistently supporting personal hygiene. Ask how practitioners now give children thinking time and help them manage colds and tissues independently.
• Outdoor clothing and allergies. Children use outdoor spaces for much of the day, and parents supply packed lunches. Bring your child's clothing and dietary needs into the settling discussion, including confirming current allergy procedures.
• Joining and settling. Allocation is first come, first served, subject to management discretion, with a waiting list when requested sessions are in demand. Arrange a tour and discuss room-based settling sessions before choosing your attendance pattern.

Hopscotch suits families seeking morning or afternoon preschool sessions as well as those needing a full nursery day, with a further choice between term-time and year-round attendance. Its strongest practical combination is age-specific rooms, outdoor space attached to each classroom and access to Parley Common. Evidence for Learning and regular parent meetings give communication a defined structure.

The Good judgement from March 2023 provides a dated quality assessment, while the communication and hygiene priorities deserve attention during a visit. For parents weighing outdoor learning, involvement in their child's progress and a choice of session lengths, Hopscotch has a clear and useful identity.