Headstart Day and Afterschool Care

Mini diggers, an outdoor reading den and weekly visiting music sessions give Headstart Day and Afterschool Care a recognisable character. This South Ockendon setting combines nursery rooms, term-time preschool and care for older children, with two gardens providing space for different stages of development. Its capacity is 78 children in total. That is a whole-setting figure, rather than the size of an individual room.

Ofsted rated Headstart Good at its 21 November 2022 inspection, with positive observations about children's relationships and engagement, alongside improvements needed in adult questioning and the organisation of mealtimes. Those findings provide a dated assessment of practice. The current offer includes separate rooms for babies and toddlers, different preschool arrangements, and visiting specialists who add music and movement to the week.

Families can choose full-day, morning or afternoon attendance, while funded hours have their own session arrangements. The practical appeal is the combination: care across the year, a term-time preschool option and school-age provision under the same roof.

Rooms and Ages

Guppies serves babies from six weeks to 18 months, with reachable baskets for familiar comfort objects, a black-and-white area for visual exploration and accessible surroundings that support crawling and pulling up. Familiar objects have a clear purpose here. A baby can keep a teddy or dummy close while beginning to explore a new space.

For children aged 18 months to two years, the Seahorse Room has a maximum of six children and emphasises movement and emerging language, with activities shaped around each child's interests. This is a room cap, separate from Headstart's overall capacity. It is a useful detail for parents weighing the scale of care for a newly mobile child.

Seals, for two- to three-year-olds, concentrates on everyday independence, including hygiene, toilet training with parents and making choices within familiar routines. These are practical steps rather than abstract school preparation. Children get opportunities to take part in their own care, with their key worker tailoring activities to their development.

Dolphin Room serves three- to five-year-olds across the year, combining circle time, early phonics, independently chosen play and access to the garden. Mini Penguins & Penguins covers ages two to five during term time, bringing together self-care for younger children and circle time and phonics as they prepare for school. The distinction matters for families choosing between preschool organised around school terms and attendance through the year.

Sharks Club supports children from Reception to Year 6, using the Penguins Room space for breakfast, afterschool and holiday care. Older children can read, receive encouragement with homework and choose indoor or outdoor activities. Holiday outings include bowling, the cinema and local country parks; these belong to the school-age club rather than the nursery children's daily programme.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) provides the common early-years framework: children's day brings together language, movement, friendships, books, number, creative activity and exploration of the world. Headstart uses Birth to Five Matters alongside it to guide practitioners' understanding of development and their monitoring of individual children. This supports planning within the EYFS, rather than replacing it with a separate set of requirements.

Children's interests help shape activities, and adults join their play to extend ideas. The preschool rooms make this concrete through stories, songs, phonics and resources children can choose for themselves. School preparation includes managing choices and routines as well as early literacy. For parents, that makes the approach broader than practising letters alone.

Tiny Mites visits weekly for music involving instruments, singing, stories, books and puppets. Super Star Sports also comes weekly, with football and yoga among the activities for children aged two to five. The day for each visiting session changes each term, giving children attending different days opportunities to participate. These sessions add identifiable experiences to the ordinary nursery week, with listening and coordination practised through activity.

In November 2022, children experimented with paint colours, explored cornflour and acted out familiar stories. Adults also used children's memories of holidays and seasons as starting points for conversation. However, questioning sometimes moved on before children had enough thinking time. The important distinction is between asking a question and leaving space for a child to answer it.

Outdoor and Community Life

Outdoor provision has substance beyond an open space. Our Baby Garden serves children aged zero to two, while older children have larger outdoor areas with a mud kitchen, balance beams, climbing equipment, bikes and scooters. The construction area includes wheelbarrows, foam bricks and mini diggers, giving pretend building work materials children can move and manipulate.

Road signs, cones and zebra crossings introduce personal safety through play. The outdoor reading den offers a quieter alternative to physical activity, so the garden supports books and conversation as well as movement. Weather, living things and changing surroundings also become material for learning. These details give parents a clearer picture of what outdoor time involves.

Relationships and Communication

A key person provides a familiar connection between child, family and nursery. Practitioners get to know children's interests and needs, while parents contribute information about development and experiences at home. Room planning uses that knowledge to shape activities, rather than treating every child of the same age as having identical next steps.

In November 2022, children shared resources, took turns and helped each other with serving lunch. Staff exchanged learning information with families and encouraged photographs of children's home experiences, which then informed activities. These examples show how communication could connect nursery learning with life outside the setting, rather than ending with a description of what happened that day.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the November 2022 inspection, Ofsted found safeguarding effective and praised the coordination of support for children with additional needs, including work with families and health agencies and access to a sensory room for individual time with a key person. These are inspection-time findings, not a new assessment of current effectiveness.

Current staffing arrangements include SENCO, safeguarding and wellbeing roles, and professional development covers child development, paediatric first aid and safeguarding. Family support also includes signposting to Thurrock Family Hubs and the Thurrock SEND Local Offer. These give parents routes to wider advice alongside conversations with their child's key person.

Meals and snacks are cooked at the nursery, and babies have a separate weaning menu shaped around their feeding stage and routine. Headstart's dietary arrangements cover allergies, intolerances and religious or cultural requirements, with staff training that includes allergy awareness and EpiPen use where needed.

Sessions and Attendance

Headstart is at Afton Drive, South Ockendon, Essex RM15 5PA. Opening hours run from 7.30am to 7pm on weekdays, across 51 weeks, with closures for bank holidays and the Christmas-to-New-Year week. This opening window is wider than the standard full-day booking.

Full-day attendance runs from 8am to 6pm; morning sessions are 9am to 1pm and afternoons 1pm to 5pm. Early care from 7.30am to 8am and evening care from 6pm to 7pm are separate options, and hourly bookings are also offered. A minimum booking of two sessions each week supports a regular attendance pattern.

Funded term-time arrangements include mornings from 8.30am to 11.30am and afternoons from noon to 3pm, including a split pattern with children going home for lunch. Other options include term-time attendance between 9am and 3pm and a combination of two days in that window with a half-day session. Funding can also be used within the 8am-to-6pm full day.

Breakfast Club runs from 7.30am to 9am and Afterschool Club from 3pm to 7pm. Holiday Club offers a full day from 7.30am to 7pm, or half-day choices of 7.30am to 1.30pm, 1pm to 7pm and 9am to 3pm. School drop-off and collection serves Aveley Primary School, Dilkes Primary School, Shaw Primary School, Bonnygate Primary School and Benyon Primary School, following Thurrock term dates. This is a transport service, rather than an admissions relationship.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded early education is offered for eligible children: 15 hours for ages two to three, and 15 or 30 hours for ages three to five. Arrangements can be term-time or stretched across the year, depending on eligibility and the chosen funding arrangement. Additional hours beyond funding can be purchased privately.

For the two- to three-year-old term-time funded full-day option, any applicable voluntary payment is discussed in advance. Families should obtain a current written quotation covering their chosen attendance pattern. The sessions and prices page sets out the booking options.

Getting There

Parking is available at the setting. Enquiries can be made by telephone, email or contact form, and registration involves returning a completed form in person or by email, followed by a confirmation email.

• Youngest starting age. Guppies covers babies from six weeks, while Headstart's general childcare offer begins at 12 weeks. Before arranging a visit for a young baby, ask which starting age applies to the intended place.
• Thinking time and mealtime transitions. In November 2022, adult questioning sometimes left too little time for answers, and waits around meals unsettled children. On a tour, ask how staff now pace conversations and organise those transitions.
• The complete cost of attendance. Funded and private sessions have different patterns, and extra hours can carry a top-up charge. Request one written quotation identifying the treatment of meals, snacks and non-food consumables for the arrangement you intend to use.
• Individual dietary care. Headstart caters for allergies and has a separate baby menu. Families managing an allergy should confirm current handling arrangements and how their child's feeding needs will be shared with staff during settling.

Headstart suits families choosing between full-day care and shorter morning or afternoon sessions, as well as those seeking term-time preschool or school-age wraparound care. The Seahorse Room's small published cap, age-separated outdoor provision and weekly Tiny Mites and Super Star Sports visits give parents concrete reasons to consider it.

The November 2022 Good judgement sits alongside specific improvements concerning children's thinking time and waits around meals. A decision should weigh those dated concerns against the room and attendance pattern that fits the child. Headstart's strongest practical case is the breadth of those choices, supported by named rooms and a clearly described day.