Millfield Nursery School

Eight acres of countryside, a copse for nature walks and a pirate ship for imaginative adventures give Millfield Nursery School a character that goes well beyond its indoor rooms. In Cropwell Butler, outdoor exploration sits alongside mixed-age play in the main nursery. This is a setting for families who want growing, movement and encounters with nature to be substantial parts of childhood.

At its September 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated Millfield Good and judged safeguarding effective. The current age range is two to five years; the main nursery brings children over two together rather than organising every activity around separate age groups. Millfield Babies occupies a separate building, with purpose-built facilities that opened in August 2025.

The strongest practical distinction is the combination of countryside and purposeful indoor spaces. Children can move between imaginative play, early reading activities and creative work, while the grounds provide room for gardening and physical challenges. Morning, afternoon and full-day bookings sit alongside a separate term-time funded afternoon model, with conditions that matter when planning attendance.

Rooms and Ages

Mixed-age play shapes the main nursery, where children share indoor spaces and learn alongside children at different stages. That arrangement makes the rooms' purposes more useful to understand than a simple sequence of age bands. A child interested in construction can play alongside another drawn to stories or pretend domestic life.

The Big Room centres on imaginative play, combining construction materials, dressing up and a home corner that can become a pretend restaurant or hospital. In the Quiet Room, preschool activities develop early number and literacy skills through practical games, Oxford University Press pre-reading materials and a library from which children aged three and above choose a book weekly to share at home. The Messy Room emphasises creative expression through paint, collage, dough and sensory materials, with an after-lunch sleep area for younger children.

Millfield Babies combines sensory baskets and musical instruments with sleep pods, while buggy walks extend its activities into the fields. Separate physical play takes place in the Rumpus Cabin. These are concrete differences in how the youngest children's space is arranged: opportunities to move and explore sit alongside provision for rest.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS provides the framework for children's learning, development and care, with play and practical experiences helping them develop communication, physical skills and early understanding. Millfield adds activities grounded in its setting. Woodland Explorers involves nature walks and outdoor activities in the fields and copse; the ongoing Growing topic brings children into the process of raising herbs, flowers and vegetables.

That growing work gives abstract ideas something children can handle. In June 2026, the gardens contained strawberries, courgettes, pumpkins, tomatoes and cucumbers, alongside herbs and flowers. Children can connect plants with food and watch changes over time. In September 2025, staff used harvested pumpkins to introduce words about size and demonstrate what a hollow pumpkin was like inside.

Weekly sports sessions involve Urban Movement Primary, whose visiting sports leader develops balance, agility and coordination through physical activities and challenges. Baking and singing also feature among the weekly activities. Together, these give children different ways to participate: using their bodies, working with ingredients or joining familiar songs.

In September 2025, songs and stories were frequent parts of the day, and staff used pictures and signs with younger children during group activities. The important teaching limitation was also clear: sometimes adults missed the chance to ask children to retrieve earlier knowledge and take an activity further. Enjoyment matters, but so does what a child learns next.

Outdoor and Community Life

The Beach Hut provides sand play, while a water wall offers another route into outdoor investigation. Elsewhere, balancing logs, walking beams and a wooden train support physical and imaginative play. A construction zone supplies diggers and building materials, and an outdoor classroom gives stories and games their own setting beyond the indoor rooms.

The grounds also include wildflower meadows, and children feed the tame alpacas. These experiences make the natural world part of ordinary nursery life rather than something encountered only on occasional outings. For a child who enjoys movement, animals or watching things grow, the setting offers several concrete reasons to engage outside.

Annual summer Sports Days split older children into separate groups, with the weekly sports coach helping organise the events. World Book Day has a customary dressing-up day. These occasions add shared experiences to the programme, with costume preparation becoming part of family participation.

Relationships and Communication

Settling begins with free visits before a child starts. Parents initially stay with their child, then build up short periods apart as familiarity grows. The gradual approach gives families a practical way to introduce nursery routines rather than expecting a complete separation immediately.

For Millfield Babies, a daily diary records changing, sleep, eating and activities. In the main nursery, key-person meetings give parents time to discuss development and see Busy Bee Books, the children's learning records. These are different forms of communication serving different needs: daily care information for the youngest children and opportunities to discuss learning in more depth.

In September 2025, staff responded calmly to mishaps and helped younger children manage difficult feelings before returning to play. Children also made up games together. For parents weighing the mixed-age arrangement, that dated picture of relationships provides useful context alongside the physical facilities.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At its September 2025 inspection, Ofsted found that children with SEND received targeted support, with staff working alongside families and other professionals to help them progress. Current procedures give the SENCO and key person defined roles in assessing needs, planning support, putting it into practice and reviewing its effect with parents. Support is adjusted through that cycle rather than treated as a single decision.

The safeguarding policy assigns responsibility to a designated lead and provides designated-person cover throughout opening hours. Collection procedures require prior authorisation for another adult, with identity checks where needed. These are practical arrangements families will encounter, separate from the dated safeguarding judgement.

Cooks prepare food on site, and usual private fees include hot lunch and a light tea. Because children have allergies, the nursery's food-from-home policy asks families not to bring food in.

Sessions and Attendance

Millfield is on Tithby Road, Cropwell Butler, Nottingham, NG12 3AJ. Opening hours run from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, across 52 weeks, with bank holidays and the stated pre-Christmas closure excluded. The Christmas arrangement covers 23 and 24 December, with a preceding-Friday closure when 23 December falls at a weekend.

In the main nursery, mornings run from 8am to 12.45pm, afternoons from 1.15pm to 6pm, and full working days from 8am to 6pm. A full working week uses the full-day pattern from Monday to Friday. A minimum booking of two full days each week applies to both Millfield Babies and the main nursery; half days may be offered only in the main nursery. That condition deserves attention if shorter sessions are central to a family's plan.

Sessions cannot be transferred. Children may be brought or collected within their booked session, while extra-session requests use a central booking system. The admissions policy generally allocates places in order of application, but a full-time request may take precedence over a part-time request depending on work commitments, occupancy and room availability.

Getting There

There is an on-site car park with designated entrance and exit routes. In March 2026, the nursery warned that it became busy at 8am and asked families to park within individual spaces and keep traffic moving, a useful consideration for parents travelling at the start of the working day.

Funding and Paid Extras

Millfield accepts Working Family Funded childcare for qualifying parents, universal funding for three- and four-year-olds, and the supported entitlement for eligible two-year-olds. Its usual funded arrangement stretches term-time entitlement across the year. A separate universal funded model runs from 1pm to 4pm, Monday to Friday, for 38 weeks, with no meals included in those sessions.

Private fees include nappies, wipes, nappy cream, sun cream and seasonal hats. Funded hours cover core childcare. From the term after a child's third birthday, separate charges apply for meals and snacks and for essentials and extras, including consumables and enrichment; the nursery provides an opt-out discussion route. Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation, and the fees and grants page provides a starting point for understanding the arrangements.

School transition includes transfer forms sent to the receiving primary school and opportunities for Reception teachers to meet a child's key person. The nursery presents nearby independent Colston Bassett School as an option for continuing within the Millfield family. Nursery attendance does not guarantee a place there; families use the school's own admissions process.

• Shorter sessions and minimum attendance. Main-nursery mornings and afternoons sit alongside the two-full-day weekly minimum. At a visit, discuss how those conditions apply to the pattern you want, especially if you are considering the separate funded afternoon model.
• Taking learning further. In September 2025, staff sometimes missed opportunities to build on children's earlier knowledge. Ask how practitioners now extend an activity when a child already understands its starting point.
• Funded-hours extras and allergies. From the term after a child's third birthday, meals, consumables and enrichment carry separate funded-hours charges, while the food-from-home policy controls what children bring in. Discuss the opt-out arrangements and current allergy practice together before agreeing your child's plan.
• Mixed-age play and outdoor life. Children over two share the main nursery's spaces, while fields, animals and gardening are substantial parts of its character. Use a visit to explore how your child's preferred activities and need for quieter time fit that arrangement.

Millfield suits families drawn to mixed-age play, extensive outdoor space and activities with something tangible behind them: vegetables to grow, books to share and physical skills to practise. Its September 2025 Good judgement provides a positive inspection position, with a specific teaching improvement to weigh alongside the strengths.

The attendance offer serves full working days, main-nursery morning or afternoon sessions and a separate term-time funded afternoon model. The minimum booking condition and funded extras are important parts of that choice. For families whose preferred pattern fits those terms, the countryside setting and varied indoor spaces give Millfield a clear identity.