Orchidale

About Us

This is what we do at Orchidale……..
Our child-led ethos is inspiring, creative and meaningful. We are passionate about learning and are determined to give our children the best opportunities possible. Using natural, open-ended resources, we respond ‘in the moment’ to a child’s learning needs, instinctively creating for each and every child their individual learning steps that take lead from their learning preferences and requirements. This enhances a child’s learning and scaffolds their play and development. With all our activities, and particularly in our outdoor learning and Forest School, we encourage children to take risks and challenge themselves safely.
Orchidale Children’s Nursery is environmentally friendly and believes that all children need to be aware of understand the importance of recycling & using less plastic. Orchidale promotes this through recycling all waste into biofuel (this includes nappy waste) Children are given the opportunity to learn the cycle of food from planting in our large growing area through to harvesting and then eating the produce!

Step into our 0-2 room where you will find a homely and welcoming atmosphere. We pride ourselves on understanding that children of this age need secure attachments that enable them to feel safe. The children are given opportunities to explore natural recourses in a heuristic way to encourage imagination and wonder. Our 0-2’s have a separate creative room where they can experience sensory play on a large scale. The children also have role play opportunities and a separate eating area. The 0-2’s have their own garden space.

Walk into the 2-5 room where you will find a role play room full of real life objects, children can explore dressing up clothes similar to what mummy or daddy would wear, make a cup of tea using china tea set and put their dolly to sleep in a real moses basket. Each child can then free-flow through to the large creative area where the possibilities are endless, we encourage children’s imagination to be free and limitless this is created by open ended loose parts. Each child can also relax in our cosy area’s or read a story of their choice. The 2-5 room has a separate woodwork area in our outdoor classroom with real child sized tools. Children can plan their constructions and then bring them to life!

We are really lucky to have free flow into our large beautiful outdoor garden which includes sand pit, mud kitchen’s, water walls and large free running spaces. Children are encouraged to take managed risk’s with our loose part play and large climbing apparatus.

We have a trained forest school leader who takes groups of children into our well-developed forest school area. Forest School offers a learner centred approach, where participants can learn through self-directed play and exploration. Children who come to the Forest School will be given the opportunity to develop their curiosity, confidence, self-esteem, creativity, empathy, communication skills, knowledge of the natural environment and ability to assess risk.

We have such pride that our children are not only challenged, happy, thoughtful and imaginative they are full of natural Curiosity and independence which is paramount to our overall ethos.