Skamps Pre-school Day Nursery

Separate spaces give Skamps its character: baby and toddler provision upstairs, a play room for older children downstairs, and a room set aside for sleep. Outside, a fenced grassy area separates younger children's play from the shared garden. This Bedworth nursery combines practical care for babies with messy play, growing and an individual approach to children's learning.

Skamps Pre-school Day Nursery occupies St Andrews House on Smorrall Lane, CV12 0JP, and has capacity for 25 children, with an accepted age range of 2 to 60 months. At its 17 January 2023 inspection, Ofsted rated it Good and judged safeguarding effective. That is a dated judgement, rather than a description of every aspect of today's provision.

The current offer includes a key person for each child, speech and language screening, and parent meetings alongside app communication. Funded morning and term-time day sessions sit alongside flexible paid hours and holiday care. The practical boundary is clear: opening hours finish at 4pm.

Rooms and Ages

Babies and children under two use the upstairs provision, with space to practise crawling and walking. Children aged 2–4 years use the ground floor. A separate sleep room contains travel cots, pushchairs and swings, giving sleep its own space away from play.

Developmental stage helps determine how children are grouped. That matters in a setting spanning infancy and preschool: the organisation recognises that children of the same age can need different activities. The baby provision also includes resources for supported sitting and early movement, while quieter children have cosy spaces within the building.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage supplies the framework for learning through play, including communication, movement, relationships, early literacy and mathematics. Skamps combines activities chosen by children with those led by adults, arranging topics around children's interests. This gives practitioners a way to extend something a child already wants to investigate rather than treating every activity as a separate lesson.

Birth to Five Matters helps staff follow development and plan the next steps. Observations feed into individual activities, with the key person exchanging information about achievements at home and nursery. For parents, the useful connection is between what a child enjoys, what staff notice and what comes next.

Protective Behaviours adds an approach to personal safety: children learn to recognise feelings that warn them something is wrong and to speak to someone about their concerns. A kindness tree makes considerate behaviour visible, using seasonal tokens to recognise children's actions. These are concrete ways of discussing feelings and behaviour within the nursery day.

In January 2023, babies and younger children explored flour on a low table, making finger marks and moving toy cars through it; a wall-mounted whiteboard encouraged larger movements. Older children investigated letters, quantities and shapes, and joined familiar passages during stories. These examples show how physical play and conversation could lead into early writing and language.

At its January 2023 inspection, Ofsted identified two areas needing further work: making sensory and mark-making activities more challenging for the older children within the under-two group, and broadening children's understanding of cultures and family lives beyond their own. Both are useful questions for families assessing how activities stretch their child.

Outdoor and Community Life

The garden combines paving, rubber matting and grass, with a canopy supporting outdoor play across the seasons. Its growing area gives children something to tend as well as somewhere to move. The fenced section for babies and toddlers provides a separate part of the garden when different ages are outside together.

In January 2023, older children searched for small creatures, examined frosted webs with magnifiers and followed the changes from caterpillar to butterfly. Frozen sand became a practical problem to solve with warm water. These were hands-on encounters with the natural world, connecting observation with experimentation.

Current activities include cultural celebrations such as Holi, Diwali and Eid, with parents invited to share their traditions. Families can also contribute skills to topics or introduce their pets. That gives the nursery a practical route to bring children's home experiences into group learning.

Relationships and Communication

A child's key person works with the family on interests, needs and settling, then remains responsible for helping the child benefit from activities. An All About Me form gathers information about development and routines, including feeding and sleep. Settling arrangements are adapted to the individual child rather than following one fixed pattern.

In January 2023, gradual introductions were agreed with parents according to each child's needs. Children also practised everyday independence, while rest followed individual requirements. These dated examples are consistent with the current emphasis on learning the family's routines before care begins.

Termly parent meetings provide time to discuss development, supported by newsletters, learning journeys and the Ovivio app, formerly Blossom. Parents can contribute experiences from home, allowing staff to build on interests that extend beyond nursery. Face-to-face conversations, telephone calls and texts offer other ways to stay in contact.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

Speech and language support has a specific structure. Time to Talk is a joint NHS and Warwickshire County Council project supporting communication development; trained Speech and Language Champions use WellComm activities individually with children to identify their communication stage and plan further support. Screening takes place with parental consent.

SEND co-ordinator roles, individual learning plans and links with Speech and Language Therapy and Early Years Inclusion and SEND provide routes for additional help. The emphasis is on identifying what a child needs and involving the appropriate professionals, with parents included in that process. When children move on, information can be shared with their next nursery or school by telephone or in person.

The team includes a baby room leader, safeguarding lead roles and practitioners undertaking further early years study. Staff receive safeguarding training, and a qualified first aider is present in the setting. These are arrangements for care and safety.

Sessions and Attendance

Skamps opens Monday to Friday, 8am–4pm, across 51 weeks, closing on bank holidays and for a week at Christmas. Funded sessions run from 8.50am–11.50am or 8.50am–2.50pm in term time. Funding is not stretched across the year; additional paid hours and school-holiday care are separate from those funded sessions.

Flexible hours are offered subject to space. The written admission form must be returned before a nursery place can be booked or a child added to the nursery's waiting list, and families receive a start-date letter when a start can be arranged. Enquiries can be made by telephone, email or the contact form, with responses during opening hours.

Booked time remains chargeable when a child leaves early or misses attendance, and early drop-offs or late collections can generate additional charges. Four weeks' notice is required to give up a place. These terms make the agreed booking, rather than time actually attended, important to the family budget.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funding includes the universal 15-hour entitlement, eligible two-year-old funding and the working-parent entitlement from the term after a child reaches 9 months. Eligibility conditions apply. Paid hours cover time outside the funded sessions and holiday attendance; current prices come in the nursery's written quotation, with the structure explained on its fees and funding page.

For funded sessions, a voluntary contribution covers food consumables, non-food consumables and activities, with an opt-out arrangement. Families also provide nappies, any required nappy cream, formula and sun cream, so the contribution does not replace the supplies brought from home. Babies' weaning food is supplied by parents too.

Lunch is a packed meal from home; snacks attract the voluntary contribution, milk is free, and breakfast can be supplied by parents or bought separately. Skamps has a nut-free policy and uses an allergy folder to discuss suitable food with families.

• A 4pm finish. The weekday opening window ends at 4pm, while funded sessions finish earlier. Families whose working day extends beyond that need to weigh the collection time carefully.
• Challenge within the baby group. January 2023 improvement points included stretching older under-twos during sensory play and widening cultural understanding. During a visit, ask how these are built into current activities for your child's stage.
• Funding and home supplies. Funded attendance is term-time only, with a voluntary consumables contribution and an opt-out arrangement. Review the written quotation alongside the nappies, formula and other supplies you will provide.
• Allergy arrangements. A nut-free policy sits alongside individual food discussions. Allergy-affected families should confirm current practice and work through the allergy folder before their child starts.

Skamps suits families seeking either a funded morning or a term-time day, as well as those needing flexible paid hours and holiday care within an 8am–4pm window. Its strongest practical features are the separation of baby play and sleep spaces, a garden organised for different ages, and communication support with named tools behind it.

The January 2023 Good judgement provides a useful inspection reference, with clear improvement points to explore. For a family comfortable with the finish time, packed lunches and supplies from home, this is a nursery with a recognisable approach to individual routines and play-based learning.