Claremont Day Nursery

A baby room capped at six, a separate sensory room and a top-floor soft play room give Claremont Day Nursery a recognisable character. This Earls Barton setting combines small-scale baby provision with space for older children to move, experiment and spend time outdoors. The garden includes vegetable growing, while village outings take learning beyond the nursery itself.

Ofsted rated Claremont Good on 27 May 2025 and identified communication and language as a strength. There is an important qualification to that positive picture: in May 2025, staff did not consistently understand the intended learning behind their activities, so some children gained less from them than they could have.

Claremont has capacity for 49 children, from birth to five years, with its everyday childcare offer starting at three months. Full days, short days, mornings and afternoons provide several ways to organise attendance. The appeal is the combination of practical choice and concrete experiences, rather than a named curriculum brand.

Rooms and Ages

Bumble Bees accommodates up to six babies aged 12 weeks to 16 months, with sensory exploration using cornflour, paint and gloop, outdoor space and walks around the village. That room cap deserves attention from parents choosing their baby's first childcare setting. It describes the maximum for this room, rather than the number of children attending across the whole nursery.

Ladybirds combines pretend cooking and tea-making with creative and sensory activities, while its outdoor equipment supports riding, climbing and balance. Children can explore familiar domestic routines through play, then switch to more physical activity outside. A nap follows lunch, making rest part of the toddler day.

Caterpillars and Butterflies occupy connected rooms on the second floor for children aged two to five, with activities including making playdough and inventing games from cardboard boxes. The arrangement lets older children move between play areas rather than remain with a single activity. Their school transition also has a practical element: teachers from their next schools are invited to meet them towards the academic year's end.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage provides the framework for learning and care, covering communication, movement, relationships, early literacy, mathematics and exploration through play. It is the common foundation for early-years provision. Claremont combines activities initiated by children with those led by adults, using observations of individual interests and development to plan what comes next.

Confidence and independence are explicit priorities. Children are encouraged to attempt unfamiliar challenges, rather than wait for an adult to do everything for them. In May 2025, younger children cleaned their hands and faces after meals, while preschool children organised their belongings and helped prepare tables. These were everyday opportunities to practise doing things for themselves.

Language also ran through ordinary play in May 2025: staff paired speech with simple signs and visual prompts, sang familiar rhymes to babies and introduced older children to vocabulary connected with their investigations. Babies explored paint with their feet; older children experimented with releasing objects from ice. These examples show how physical exploration can give adults something concrete to talk about with children.

The development point concerns what happens after an activity is chosen. In May 2025, staff knew children's interests and assessed their development, but were sometimes uncertain about the learning they intended or the support needed. Enjoyment and purposeful teaching need to work together. The practical question is whether an enjoyable activity also advances the child's next learning step.

Outdoor and Community Life

Vegetable growing gives the garden another use alongside running and climbing. Children go outside across the seasons, with families asked to supply wet-weather clothing throughout the year and sun hats in warmer weather. Outdoor play therefore requires clothes suited to getting wet or dirty, rather than an expectation of staying spotless.

Village visits include the library, shops, fire station and park. These bring books, everyday transactions and local services into children's experience. The separate Soft Play Room provides indoor opportunities for crawling, rolling and jumping, so physical exploration has a place inside the building as well as outdoors.

Relationships and Communication

Settling begins with free introductory sessions before attendance starts. Staff use these to learn about children's routines, preferences and dislikes, while families become familiar with nursery life. For babies, the aim is to stay close to home routines, including working with parents and kitchen staff on weaning. That gives families a concrete way to contribute to care from the outset.

Each child has a key person responsible for developmental observation, planning and contact with parents. Tapestry, the online learning journal, carries photographs and short observations, and parents can add their own achievements and updates. This creates a shared picture of development rather than relying entirely on what happens during nursery hours.

Parents Evening takes place twice a year for more detailed discussions about progress. Stay and Play Sessions run throughout the year, allowing relatives to join activities in the rooms and speak with practitioners. These serve different purposes: one makes time for a progress conversation, while the other lets families take part in their child's nursery experiences.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the May 2025 inspection, Ofsted found safeguarding effective and described prompt action on developmental delays, with staff, families and outside agencies working together to support children with SEND to make good progress. The current key-person arrangements also provide a route for concerns to reach both parents and the manager.

The separate Sensory Room contains mood lighting and illuminated toys and is accessible to all age groups. In May 2025, children used this space when emotions became overwhelming, while timers helped explain waiting and sharing. The physical room and the adult support mattered together: equipment was part of an approach to helping children manage difficult moments.

Staff receive first-aid training, and key staff are trained to administer and record medication where children with special needs or disabilities require it during nursery hours. Recruitment includes identity and reference checks, induction and restrictions on personal-care duties until disclosure checks are complete. These are care arrangements, rather than a substitute for the dated safeguarding judgement.

Sessions and Attendance

Claremont opens Monday to Friday and operates for 51 weeks, closing on statutory bank holidays and from Christmas Day through New Year’s Day inclusive. Full-day sessions finish at 6pm and can begin at either 7.30am or 8am. The earlier start carries an additional charge.

A short day runs from 9am to 3pm. Morning sessions end at 1pm, with either a 7.30am or 8am start, while full afternoons run from 1pm to 6pm. These are genuinely different attendance options: the short day offers a compact daytime pattern, and separate mornings or afternoons suit families arranging care for part of the day.

Getting There

The nursery is at Claremont Court, Tebbutts Yard, Earls Barton, Northampton, NN6 0JN; its contact address also uses High Street. There is on-site parking. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 01604 810449 or by email to info@claremontdaynursery.co.uk.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded childcare is offered for eligible younger children and for three- and four-year-olds, including extended entitlement. Term-time and stretched arrangements are offered, but the exact weekly allocation needs careful clarification before a family builds its working pattern around funding. Claremont also accepts Tax Free Childcare payments.

Meals are cooked in the nursery's own kitchen, with breakfast, lunch and a lighter tea served according to the session; the nursery publishes a nut-free policy. Meals are included in private-session fees, while funded two-, three- and four-year-olds can have nursery meals for a voluntary separate charge or bring ready-to-eat food that requires no heating.

Nappies, creams and wet wipes are included in fees, alongside drinks. Additional sessions outside funded hours attract private fees. Families should obtain a current written quotation covering their chosen pattern and any earlier starts; the fees page explains the charge structure.

• Purpose behind activities. In May 2025, staff were not consistently clear about intended learning or how much support children needed. During a visit, ask a practitioner to explain what a planned activity is helping children learn and how they adapt it.
• Funding allocation. The funding descriptions combine annual entitlements with weekly patterns that do not reconcile. Before committing to a term-time or stretched arrangement, request a written breakdown of funded hours and paid sessions, including the position for a funded baby.
• Baby care and the building. Bumble Bees has a six-baby cap, while older children's rooms and soft play occupy upper floors. A visit is the opportunity to discuss your baby's routines and see how movement between the building's spaces works.
• Food from home. Funded children aged two to four can bring prepared food instead of paying the voluntary meal charge, and the nursery has a nut-free policy. Families managing allergies should confirm current food-handling practice and what they can send.

Claremont suits families seeking either full-day attendance or shorter days, mornings and afternoons, with a capped baby room and several spaces for physical and sensory play. Free settling sessions, a key person and Tapestry give parents practical ways to stay involved. The garden and village visits add substance to the play-based day.

The balance is positive, with a clear teaching question to pursue. The Good judgement from May 2025 sits alongside a specific need for staff to understand activities' learning purposes more consistently. For a family choosing Claremont, that issue and a precise funding breakdown deserve attention alongside the attractions of its rooms and attendance choices.