Pixies Day Nursery and Pixies Too, Locks Heath

An Edwardian house, a children’s kitchen and an allotment give Pixies in Locks Heath a recognisable character. This is a nursery where growing ingredients, making food and exploring music have dedicated spaces, alongside rooms for babies, toddlers and preschool children. The separate sleep room in the baby unit is an equally useful detail: rest has its own space away from play.

At its July 2022 inspection, Ofsted rated the nursery Good overall, found safeguarding effective and judged that children needing additional help received good support, including focused language group activities. That judgement is dated. The current offer combines sensory play, outdoor access and practical independence, with a second preschool operating during term time.

The nursery accepts children aged 3 to 60 months. Families can choose morning, afternoon or day sessions, with term-time and year-round contracts.

Rooms and Ages

Babies have a unit split between two rooms, with sensory and messy play, soft play spaces and a small outdoor area opened for free-flow play at points during the day. Underfloor heating supports floor-level exploration in colder weather. A separate sleep room gives resting babies a quieter setting, while access to the main garden brings opportunities to use push-alongs and trikes.

The 2–3 Room combines construction, imaginative play and quieter spaces, with an emphasis on friendships, emotions and increasing independence. Its own garden connects directly to the room, and children also use the larger garden at least twice daily. Children needing a nap have individual mats; those staying awake have calmer activities. This makes rest a choice based on the child’s needs rather than an activity everyone must share.

Preschool and Sessional Preschool encourage children to choose activities independently and practise everyday tasks, including dressing, pouring drinks and serving food. Early letter sounds sit alongside conversation about the weather and days of the week. The two preschool settings therefore share an emphasis on self-help and communication while offering different attendance arrangements.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS guides learning through play, covering communication, physical development and relationships as well as early literacy, mathematics and creative expression. It is the framework all early years settings follow. Here, activities are planned around children’s interests, and practitioners use observations to decide what to introduce next.

The Music Room contains a piano, keyboards, guitars and percussion instruments, with microphones and a karaoke machine for singing and performance. Children can explore how instruments sound and accompany their singing. There is space for making noise as well as listening.

A supervised Childrens Kitchen gives cooking a practical home: children mix, knead and roll food they are making from scratch. Following a recipe brings an everyday reason to listen, measure and work through a sequence. The PiXieS Allotment growing area extends that experience outdoors, where children plant, water and harvest produce that can then be used in cooking activities. Food becomes something they help create.

Outdoor and Community Life

The main garden includes a mud kitchen, large tyres for climbing and crawling, and bikes, scooters and trikes. Hard and soft surfaces give children different spaces to explore, while the growing area introduces plants, soil and the work involved in caring for a crop. These are concrete opportunities for movement and investigation.

Indoors, the Sensory Room has an underwater theme, bubble tubes, fibre optic lighting and tactile resources. Children can use its quieter surroundings for rest or choose more interactive experiences. The Fitness Suite adds a ball pit, soft blocks and a mini gym, giving active play another setting when children are indoors.

In July 2022, toddlers carried water and tipped it through a drainpipe, while babies reached towards shiny objects suspended from trees. Preschool children used rhythm to explore the syllables in their names. Those examples connect movement, language and exploration to ordinary play rather than separate lessons.

Relationships and Communication

Tapestry is the online learning journal used to share children’s achievements with parents. Families have a secure login, can view observations and photographs, and can add moments from home. That creates a practical two-way channel: what a child enjoys outside nursery can help shape the next activity inside it.

The PiXieS Parent Forum meets roughly every three months, usually after work for about an hour. Nursery changes, fundraising and decisions such as possible fee increases are discussed. It gives parents a route to contribute to how the setting runs, beyond conversations about their own child.

In July 2022, the key-person arrangements included helping children become familiar with their next room and practitioner before moving. Staff also exchanged information with parents and professionals and used professional advice to set developmental targets. Room changes were treated as a process, with introductions before the move itself.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

In the 2–3 Room, each child’s key person completes a progress check during the term after their second birthday, covering communication, physical development and personal, social and emotional development. Parents receive a copy. This gives families a defined point for discussing development alongside the ongoing learning journal.

A designated Safeguarding Officer and recruitment checks form part of the nursery’s arrangements. Staff are encouraged to continue training, and the team’s stated aim is for each new member to complete first-aid training within six months of joining. That is a training aim, rather than a claim that every practitioner currently holds it.

Food is prepared from scratch in the nursery kitchen, with separate baby meals and a four-week menu cycle that changes between summer and winter. Individual dietary needs are recorded and monitored, including medical and religious requirements and vegetarian or vegan diets.

For illness, families are contacted when a child needs collecting because they are too unwell to remain. Regular prescribed medicines must be recorded and signed in by a parent or carer; non-prescription medicines require advance written consent and a medical reason. These arrangements matter when planning who can collect an unwell child during a working day.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 39 Locks Road, Locks Heath, Southampton, SO31 6NS. Opening hours are 7.30am to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday, across 51 weeks, with closures for bank holidays and Christmas.

Morning sessions run from 8am to 1pm, afternoons from 1pm to 6pm, and day sessions from 8am to 6pm. A School DAY pattern runs from 9am to 3pm, while the Fulltime pattern covers 8am to 6pm on four or five days a week. Early bird and Late Rooster services extend the start or finish to 7.30am or 6.30pm respectively, with separate charges.

Sessional Preschool opens from 9am to 3pm during term time. Term-time-only and year-round session contracts are both offered, so families can match attendance to school holidays or a continuing working schedule. A charge secures the set sessions for each term and books settling sessions; written notice of at least four weeks is required for contract changes or cancellation by either party.

PB’s School’s Out Club provides breakfast, after-school and holiday care for school-aged children up to eight years old. The breakfast and after-school services include journeys to or from Locks Heath schools. This is a childcare service for children already attending school, rather than a route into Reception.

Getting There

The nursery car park is for nursery collection and drop-off. It cannot be used while parents take children to Locks Heath School, so families combining both journeys need an alternative place to park for the school part of the trip.

Prospectuses can be requested by telephone on 01489 576758 or through the prospectus form. The form lets families specify their preferred weekday sessions and intended start date.

Funding and Paid Extras

Universal funding is offered from the term after a child’s third birthday: up to 15 hours weekly over 38 weeks, or up to 11 hours over 51 weeks when stretched. For eligible working families, the offer is up to 30 hours over 38 weeks or 22 hours over 51 weeks; families must apply and supply their eligibility code. These are different ways of spreading the funded entitlement, rather than additional hours on top of it.

Meals and snacks are charged separately from childcare, including on funded attendance. Children over two can opt out of cooked meals and bring a healthy lunchbox, but lunchboxes are not permitted in the baby unit because of allergies and intolerances.

Non-food consumables carry a separate charge on funded hours, which is voluntary and can be declined. There is also a termly toothbrush charge. Fees are paid monthly in advance by direct debit; current prices belong in the nursery’s written quotation, alongside the chosen sessions and extras. The fees page sets out the charging structure.

• Changes between activities. In July 2022, some children became disengaged during changes to the daily routine, and some team leaders did not consistently demonstrate effective practice to colleagues. Ask how routines and staff coaching now address those two points.
• Baby rest and settling. The baby unit has a separate sleep room, and a charge covers booking settling sessions. During a visit, discuss how those sessions and sleep arrangements would fit your baby’s usual routine.
• Funded attendance and food. Funded hours have a voluntary consumables charge, while food is charged separately and baby-unit lunchboxes are prohibited. Families managing allergies should confirm current dietary practice and the food arrangements for their child’s attendance.
• Combining nursery and school journeys. Nursery parking cannot be used for the accompanying trip to Locks Heath School. This restriction matters for families planning to use both nursery care and the school services.

Pixies suits families choosing morning or afternoon care as well as those needing day sessions, with term-time preschool and year-round contracts adding further options. Its strongest practical attractions are the separate baby sleep space, supervised cooking, the PiXieS Allotment and dedicated music and sensory facilities. Children have several concrete ways to explore the same idea, from growing ingredients to preparing food.

The Good judgement from July 2022 supports the choice, with improvements identified around routine changes and staff leadership. Families should weigh those dated findings alongside the attendance pattern and the separate food and funded-consumables charges. The result is a recognisable nursery offer with useful choices about how much of the week a child spends there.