Arc Nursery

A roof garden with a planting allotment, a mud kitchen and animals gives Arc Nursery an unusually tangible outdoor identity for its Borough address. The setting occupies a detached building with two storeys and a second garden at ground level. Children can use both outdoor areas daily through the year, making growing, exploring and physical play part of ordinary nursery life.

Arc has capacity for 59 children, accepting babies from 3 months through to children aged 5. Its not-for-profit charitable structure includes a board of parents whose children attend or have attended. That gives parent involvement a formal place in how the nursery is overseen, rather than leaving it solely to conversations with practitioners.

At its June 2024 inspection, Ofsted rated Arc Good, judged safeguarding effective and found that children with SEND made good developmental progress, while identifying inconsistent support for independence and younger children's behaviour. These qualifications matter alongside the positive judgement. The practical offer combines paid full days with shorter funded sessions and a funded term-time day.

Rooms and Ages

Rainbow Room and Sunshine Room each have a room leader and deputy room leader. Weekly music and movement and yoga involve both rooms; the sports club is for Rainbow Room children. This gives families concrete examples of organised activity alongside the play children choose themselves.

Across the nursery, the routine makes materials accessible to children. A craft trolley lets them select resources for drawing, making and cutting, while paints, pencils and crayons support early mark-making. Role play gives imagination a place in the day, and stories and singing introduce counting and number recognition. The emphasis is on doing and experimenting.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage provides the framework for learning through play, including language, physical development, relationships, early literacy and mathematics. Arc adds Planning in the Moment: practitioners develop learning from children's interests as play unfolds. An interest can become the starting point for an adult to extend a child's thinking, rather than requiring every learning opportunity to begin with a predetermined activity.

The daily routine gives that approach practical shape. Children explore texture with malleable materials, match shapes and colours with small-world resources, and discuss quantities through questions about buckets and water. Those experiences bring language and mathematical ideas into play children already want to pursue. Music and movement, yoga and the Rainbow Room sports club add weekly organised sessions to this everyday learning.

Outdoor and Community Life

Physical play has substantial equipment behind it: bikes, a balancing beam and a climbing frame in the garden. The roof garden adds bug hunting and the mud kitchen, while the planting allotment offers another kind of hands-on exploration. These spaces serve different purposes, from practising balance to investigating living things.

Outings extend beyond the building. Children regularly visit local parks and attractions, with trips to farms and museums during the year. Examples include Freightliners Farm, Surrey Docks Farm and the Science Museum; Crystal Palace Park also features among the nursery's outings. These are examples of destinations, rather than a fixed weekly itinerary. For a family choosing city childcare, the combination of everyday garden access and trips beyond the site is a clear part of Arc's appeal.

Relationships and Communication

Settling requires time from parents as well as children. The minimum programme spans 2 weeks across 10 consecutive days: during the first week, a parent stays for the complete 1.5-hour period, while the second introduces longer periods apart once the child is settled. The first week is free; the second is charged. This is a structured introduction, with a real implication for arranging work and other care before the usual attendance pattern begins.

A key person features in the daily routine, using questions to extend children's play. After lunch, children who need rest can use a quiet sleep area. These are practical arrangements for balancing activity with individual needs, rather than expecting every child to maintain the same pace throughout the day.

Parents receive daily information about what their child has eaten. Fresh meals are cooked on site by the nursery's chef, with menus changing seasonally on a 3-week rotation; the menu policy allows alterations for individual allergies. This gives food a predictable structure while providing a mechanism for dietary adjustments.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

During June 2024, the SENCO helped practitioners develop care plans and worked with parents, speech and language therapists and dieticians. Language support included signs and objects used alongside speech, as well as words gathered from children's home languages. Those observations describe specific ways of supporting communication and individual needs at that time.

Later safety findings require attention too: Ofsted's January 2025 outcome confirmed that risk-assessment and staff health-and-safety actions had been met, while its August 2025 compliance outcome recorded further breaches that the nursery had acted to address, including staff responsibilities and risk assessments for roof-garden play. The January response included stronger daily checks and further staff training opportunities. In August, staff had received support to understand their responsibilities and follow appropriate assessments. The repeated attention to risk management makes outdoor supervision a useful subject for a visit, even though the documents record corrective action.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 39 Crosby Row, Southwark, London SE1 3YD. Opening hours run from 8am until 6pm on weekdays, with care operating across the year apart from bank holidays, the Christmas-to-New-Year closure and three staff-training inset days. Families need another arrangement for those closures.

Paid bookings are full days. The fees guidance recommends attendance on at least two days each week, and the terms set normal bookings at a minimum of two full days, up to five. A three-day block includes either Monday or Friday. These are meaningful scheduling conditions for parents trying to fit nursery around a working week.

Funded attendance has different patterns. The 15-hour arrangement runs across five morning sessions, 9am to noon, or five afternoon sessions, 1pm to 4pm. For 30-hour funding, the term-time day runs Monday to Friday from 9am until 3pm. Additional paid hours can extend funded attendance. The distinction between these arrangements and paid full days matters more than the opening window alone.

Waiting-list order generally favours children who have waited longest, with sibling priority and consideration of circumstances affecting a child or family’s welfare. An application form and non-refundable registration charge are required to join the list. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 020 7378 7532 or through the contact form.

Funding and Paid Extras

Arc offers both 15 and 30-hours free childcare, with funded-only attendance delivered during term time. Eligibility remains a condition of funding, and additional hours are paid separately. Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation; the fees page explains the charging structure.

For paid care, breakfast before 9am, lunch, tea, fruit, snacks and milk are included, together with nappies, wipes, sunscreen and trips. Additional purchased hours also include meals, snacks and nappies. Funded attendance has an important qualification: the 15-hour sessions include a morning or afternoon snack, while children over 3 are charged for meals and snacks on days when they attend free hours. Families comparing funded patterns should factor in that age-dependent charge.

Fees are paid monthly in advance. A deposit and settling-in charge accompany acceptance, and leaving requires 30 days' written notice; changing attendance days also requires 30 days' written notice, with requests considered individually. Booked days remain payable during sickness or holidays. The Swap Days arrangement permits three replacement days per year for attendance missed through sickness or holidays, excludes bank holidays and inset days, and requires booking at least a day ahead.

• Outdoor safety. Risk management featured in both January and August 2025 outcomes, with roof-garden play specifically addressed in August. On a visit, ask how practitioners supervise that space and carry out daily checks.
• Independence and behaviour. In June 2024, some capable children received unnecessary help at lunch, and younger children were not consistently taught why pushing or taking toys was unacceptable. Ask how staff now encourage self-service and respond to these situations.
• Settling and work commitments. The introductory programme lasts at least 2 weeks, with parents staying during the first week's sessions. Plan for that commitment before normal attendance starts.
• Funded food and allergies. Charges for meals and snacks apply to over-3s on free-hours days, alongside an included snack in the 15-hour session arrangement. Confirm how the charge applies to your chosen pattern and how any allergy will be managed in practice.

Arc suits families seeking either paid full-day attendance or funded morning, afternoon or term-time daytime care. The roof garden, ground-level garden and play-led Planning in the Moment approach give its offer substance, while parent trustees add a clear organisational identity.

The balance is important. The June 2024 Good judgement sits alongside specific weaknesses in independence and behaviour support, and the later safety outcomes make risk-management practice a central consideration. Families drawn to outdoor learning and a structured settling programme have concrete reasons to consider Arc, with equally concrete points to explore on a visit.