All A-Board Day Nursery & Tiny Town

Most nurseries sell the whole year. This one runs to school terms, and that single decision shapes everything else about it.

All A-Board is a family-run setting on St James Way in Sidcup, in the London Borough of Bexley, taking children from babies to five. The nursery is open plan and free flowing, with dedicated areas for each age group. Attached to it is Tiny Town: ten role-play areas over two levels with an upper walkway and a garden, used by the nursery by day and open to the public at weekends.

Ofsted inspected on 4 March 2026 and published a report card, which carries area judgements instead of a single overall grade. Achievement, behaviour and routines, children's welfare and wellbeing, and inclusion all reached the strong standard; curriculum and teaching and leadership and governance reached the expected standard. The safeguarding standards were met. Attendance is bought in term-time weeks, with an optional paid holiday club covering the school breaks.

Learning and Named Experiences

Teaching follows the Early Years Foundation Stage, the statutory framework setting the standards every childcare provider in England must meet for children's learning, development and care from birth to five. In practice it means a day built from play rather than lessons: practitioners watch what a child can already do, then plan the next steps from there, and the milestones are checked as the child goes.

Above that floor sit extras brought in by outside organisations and included in the fees: cookery, Spanish lessons, physical education and sensory exploration. The Spanish is not a token. In March 2026 older children were using Spanish words and helping to tell Spanish stories, while others were investigating floating and sinking, drawing from observation, releasing objects frozen into ice and working out how to arrange things from smallest to largest. New vocabulary is introduced deliberately, and children were using it back with increasing accuracy.

Physical activity is unusually well covered. Yoga sessions run for strength and calm breathing, football arrives as an external class, outdoor play happens daily, and leaders plan to add forest school alongside it.

Outdoor and Community Life

The outdoor space carries water play, balance bikes and room to run. It also holds a sensory den in the garden, which parents raised the money for, and which had a marked effect on the emotional wellbeing and development of children with special educational needs and disabilities. A regulation station sits alongside it, and children pick their own resources in both.

Tiny Town is the feature that no neighbouring nursery has. Its ten areas include The Farm Shop, stocked with textures and varieties of healthy food rather than the usual plastic supermarket, and Olivia's Cafe, both built in April 2023, plus The Sensory Club, a deliberately darker, quieter room with light-up cubes, bubble tubes and puzzle walls for a child who has had enough of noise. Sessions in it run daily alongside staff, organised and planned rather than left as open free play.

Relationships and Communication

The key-person bond is the axis the setting was built around, and reproducing it was the stated reason for opening. Days begin with children talking about how they feel and about the activities ahead, a small routine with a large effect, since a child who has named a mood early is easier to help later. In March 2026 staff knew each child extremely well and offered reassurance, guidance or space according to which was needed. Settling-in visits are arranged with families before a child's start date.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

Inclusion was one of the four areas reaching the strong standard. Starting points are identified with care and precision, support is tailored for physical needs and additional needs, and progress is monitored alongside parents and outside professionals. The clearest illustration is mobility: children who arrived needing help to move can now walk across the room and explore the whole nursery independently. The safeguarding standards were met, with leaders operating an open culture in which concerns are identified and acted on.

Independence is taught rather than waited for: babies wash their hands before meals and learn to climb safely, older children help set the table and serve their own food, and toothbrushing and personal safety are part of daily learning.

All food is prepared on site each day and served fresh, with the menu rotated across a wide spread of foods. Private fees are inclusive of snacks and meals, while funded children pay a supplement towards food and activities. Tiny Town is run as a nut-free zone, and food is not shared between children there.

The nursery is at 84-86 St James Way, Sidcup, DA14 5HF.

Sessions and Attendance

Doors are open Monday to Friday, 8.00am to 6.00pm, and three patterns are sold inside that window: a standard full day of 8.00am to 6.00pm, an AM half day session of 8.00am to 1.00pm with lunch included, and a PM half day session that runs to 6.00pm with tea included. The minimum booking is four half day sessions or two full days a week, so two days a week is a real option and so are four mornings.

Term-time operation is the trade-off. Over the school breaks there is an optional paid holiday club for children up to six, running 9.00am to 4.00pm. Each visit includes two spells in Tiny Town alongside time in the gardens and the nursery room.

Funding and Paid Extras

Government-funded places are accepted. Meals and snacks sit outside the funding, so funded families pay a supplement towards food and activities on top. Privately paid fees cover meals, snacks and drinks, trips arranged with parents' knowledge, the extra activities that run through the day, and exclusive use of Tiny Town with no outside visitors during nursery hours.

Registration takes application and permission forms, identification for the child and a deposit. Invoices are issued a week from the end of each month for the month ahead, fees are due in advance, and there are no refunds for sickness or holidays. Current prices come with the nursery's own written quotation, and the structure behind them is set out on the nursery information page.

• Consistency between adults. The March 2026 report asked leaders to strengthen practitioners' knowledge so that every child gets consistently strong interactions, and to keep training precisely targeted. Most staff were already clear about what each activity was for; the caveat is about the rest.
• Term time, not all year. A family needing cover every working week buys the holiday club on top, at its own rate and its own hours, so August is a separate arrangement rather than an extension of the nursery day.
• What funding does not stretch to. Food and activities are chargeable on funded places, so the monthly figure a funded family pays is never zero. The nut-free rule is published for Tiny Town specifically, so an allergy-affected family will want the current kitchen position in writing.
• Getting the days you want. Where a nursery cannot cover the full week a family wants, the usual outcome is a part-week place, a partial day, or days that were not the first choice. In busy areas parents put a name down a year ahead and still take what they are offered, and some run two settings side by side until the first can cover the pattern.

The pitch here is unusually legible: a family-run setting with a two-storey imaginary town attached, a strong-standard judgement on inclusion, and a record describing children with additional needs making real physical and emotional gains rather than simply being accommodated.

Curriculum and teaching and leadership and governance sat at the expected standard rather than above it, and the improvement points both concern the consistency of adult interaction. That is a fair reading of a young setting: the culture is there, the evenness across every practitioner is still being built.

It suits a family whose rhythm already follows the school year, and it suits part-week attendance as squarely as full days, since four mornings or two full days both clear the minimum. It is a weaker fit for a household needing continuous year-round cover, where the holiday club becomes a second set of arrangements rather than a convenience.