Ashdown Day Nursery

Twice a week the older children spend a morning in the nursery's own private woodland, gathering wood and bracken for the fires and learning about the animals that share it. The woodland explains most of what this family-owned setting is: a nursery on the edge of Ashdown Forest, on Tomtits Lane in Forest Row, where being outside in all weathers is ordinary business. Children come from birth to five, and there are 56 places in total.

Ofsted rated the nursery Good in April 2024, with all four areas of its work judged Good and safeguarding arrangements effective. In May 2026 Ofsted took a compliance action, prompted by the provider's own report of significant events, and closed it that month.

The teaching borrows openly: the Curiosity Approach, worked through with elements of Reggio Emilia, Waldorf Steiner and Montessori, and an under-twos pedagogy drawing on Reggio Emilia, Waldorf and Pikler approaches. In practice that adds a daily Ring Time circle, a Thursday music session and forest school twice a week. Play is child-led for much of the day, and bookings start at a floor of two sessions a week.

Rooms and Ages

The structure is simple: a baby room that welcomes every baby and toddler, and playrooms for the older children, who move between indoors, garden and woodland across the day. Rooms are spacious and full of natural light, and the playthings, mostly natural materials, are chosen and cared for by adults and children together.

The two groups are not sealed off: toddlers spend time with the older children a few times a week, sharing snack and joining them for music on Mondays, which is how a child gets used to the next stage before moving up.

Learning and Named Experiences

Every nursery in England works to the Early Years Foundation Stage, the standards childcare providers must meet for children's learning, development and care from birth to five. In practice the day is built on play and observation: adults watch what a child is doing, note where they have got to and plan next steps across areas of learning from communication and physical development to early literacy and mathematics.

On top of that floor sits a rhythm, repeated until it is second nature. Ring Time makes a circle morning and afternoon for songs, poems and ring games, sung sometimes in the languages spoken by families and staff. A music session runs on Thursdays, and the older children have a weekly yoga session. Snack has a daily helper, and the fruit and vegetables follow a rhythm calendar by colour, so the same food arrives on the same day each week. For the under-twos, baking is the main planned activity, chosen for its real purpose: mixing, waiting, then eating what you made.

Outdoor and Community Life

The garden is a working one. Children dig in the earth, play in the sandpit and explore the trees and the mud kitchen, while adults sweep paths and tend vegetables beside them, so the jobs small children copy are real jobs. Babies have their own designated area of the garden for playing and crawling.

Forest school runs twice a week in the private woodland, where children look after the yurt and gather wood for the fires, and which the nursery calls "a magical morning in the forest". A weekly nature walk and a weekly movement walk take children into the local area, and the youngest take the long walk to the forest too. Waterproofs, boots and hats are needed all year round.

A key person holds each child's day together. In April 2024 inspectors recorded that key persons knew their children's stage of development and what came next in their learning, and that the team pooled what it knew into its planning. The same visit found toddlers helping each other pull off boots and waterproofs after a walk, celebrating as they managed it. Children learning more than one language heard words from home used by staff. Planning for every child, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, was judged secure, with the provider clear that children develop at their own rates.

Two points were set for development at that visit: the changeover moments between activities, which could work better for the youngest children, and finding more ways to bring children's home cultures and heritages into the setting so every child feels a sense of belonging. Both are worth asking about now.

Settling is not rushed. Three complimentary introductory sessions are offered to every new child, with more at no cost if needed. The Famly app carries day-to-day contact with home. Meals are cooked on site by the nursery cook with the children helping, and lunch at 12pm is eaten together after a verse. Three meals a day, morning and afternoon snacks, milk, wipes and all nappies are included in the fee.

Sessions and Attendance

The nursery is open from 8am to 6pm, 50 weeks of the year. Early drop-off from 7.30am costs extra, and breakfast is served from then. At 8.30 the children leave the rookery building for their playrooms or the garden, and the nursery asks that every child has arrived by 9.00am. Lunch is at 12pm, and some children go home at 1.00pm while others stay through the afternoon. Bookings run on a published minimum of two sessions a week.

Funding and Paid Extras

Government funded early education is taken here: the nine-month, two-year and three- and four-year-old entitlements, stretched across 50 weeks rather than term time only. Tax-Free Childcare and childcare vouchers are accepted. A 5% discount applies to full-time children and a 5% discount to siblings and twins, but the two cannot be stacked. A deposit secures the place, is deducted from the final invoice, and is not refunded if you cancel, as the fees and conditions page sets out. Current prices come in the nursery's own written quotation.

• A compliance action closed in May 2026. In March 2026 the provider notified Ofsted of significant events covering safeguarding policies and procedures, staff-to-child ratios, sleeping arrangements and risk assessment. A regulatory visit on 8 May 2026 recorded that some requirements were not being met, and set out the steps already taken: all staff retrained in safeguarding, safer sleep procedures revisited, transition routines reinforced so that every child is accounted for, and closer oversight of daily practice. One action on staff references remained; by 21 May 2026 Ofsted was satisfied that all of them had been met, and the nursery remains registered. Recent enough that most families will want to raise it.
• A rhythm that rewards regular attendance. Weekly activities land on set days, so a child booked for two or three days a week will meet only some of them. Activity days flex a few times a term, particularly around festivals and birthdays, so part-week children get a turn at the rest. Ask which day carries which activity before fixing a pattern.
• Getting the days you actually want. Where a nursery cannot offer every day a family asks for, the usual outcome is a part-week booking or days that were not the first choice; in busy areas parents register more than a year ahead and are still offered only part of the week. Some families run a child across two settings until one can cover the whole week, at the cost of more change for the child.

This is a nursery for families who want a child outdoors, unhurried and in a routine they can predict, rather than in a bright, busy playroom with a timetable of adult-led lessons. The woodland mornings, the Ring Time circle and the natural materials are the method rather than decoration, and a child who takes to repetition and the outdoors in all weathers will get a great deal from it. Full days from 8am to 6pm suit parents working a standard week, while the two-session floor makes genuine part-week attendance workable, and funded hours are stretched across 50 weeks rather than stopping in the holidays. It fits less well if you need cover before 7.30am or after 6pm, or want formal school preparation in place of play. On the May 2026 action, the record shows a provider that reported itself and closed every action inside ten weeks.