Blackbrook Nursery & Pre-School in Padgate
At Evolution Childcare in Padgate, we offer beautifully designed rooms equipped with high-quality resources and engaging facilities to inspire learning and support every stage of your child’s development. Each space is thoughtfully created to encourage exploration, creativity, and growth in a safe and nurturing environment.”
Our highly trained and experienced team offers consistent, attentive care, ensuring every child feels safe, valued and secure. While all staff support and care for the children throughout the day, each child is assigned a dedicated keyworker. The keyworker plays a vital role in supporting children’s early development, from crawling and babbling through to walking, talking, and confidently exploring the world around them. Keyworkers also build strong, trusting relationships with families, ensuring regular communication and shared understanding of each child’s routines, progress and wellbeing.
We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, with staff planning a wide range of age and stage appropriate activities that promote learning through play. Our comprehensive planning system includes detailed observations and identified next steps, enabling us to tailor activities to each child’s individual needs, interests and developmental stage. Children are encouraged to take part in all planned activities, with staff offering guidance, reassurance and support throughout.
The room is set up to allow children to move freely between different learning areas, promoting independence and choice. Staff are positioned throughout the room to support learning and play within each area, ensuring children are engaged, suitably challenged and supported at all times. There is a strong focus on developing both fine and gross motor skills, which develop rapidly during this age group. Activities include plenty of physical movement such as dancing, exploration, investigation and hands-on sensory experiences.
We provide a nutritious, seasonal menu and are fully inclusive of a wide range of dietary requirements, whether due to personal preference, allergies or religious beliefs. Mealtimes are calm, social experiences that support children’s independence and early self-help skills. Staff model positive eating habits and support children to explore new tastes and textures at their own pace.
Our toddlers also benefit from daily outdoor play sessions in our large, stimulating outdoor area. This gives them the opportunity to run freely, climb, ride bikes and explore the natural environment while learning about the changing seasons and the world around them. Outdoor learning is an important part of our curriculum, supporting physical development, curiosity and early risk awareness in a safe, supervised environment.
All activities and daily routines are planned and reviewed in line with the EYFS framework, which underpins our observations, assessments and overall approach to each child’s learning and development. We are committed to providing a safe, inclusive and nurturing environment where every child can thrive, develop confidence and build the foundations for lifelong learning
Our highly trained and experienced team plans a wide range of challenging and meaningful activities each day, carefully differentiated to meet the individual ages, stages and learning abilities of the children. Learning is child-led and play-based, with children given the freedom to choose the activities they wish to access throughout the day. Staff are always present to support, extend and enhance children’s learning, encouraging curiosity, problem-solving and resilience. Our team skilfully observe children’s play to identify teachable moments, ensuring learning is purposeful, responsive and developmentally appropriate.
The room environment is thoughtfully designed, with low-level interactive displays that introduce early concepts such as numbers, colours, shapes and the alphabet. These displays encourage hands-on learning and allow children to engage with early literacy and numeracy skills in a fun and meaningful way. Resources are accessible and open-ended, enabling children to follow their interests and develop independence in choosing and using materials.
There is a strong focus on developing children’s communication and language skills through daily interactions, group discussions, storytelling, songs and structured activities that encourage listening, understanding and confident self-expression. Staff model rich vocabulary, support early conversational skills and create opportunities for children to communicate in a range of meaningful contexts.
Each child is allocated a dedicated keyworker who is responsible for maintaining their development records and completing regular monthly observations. Strong partnerships with parents are central to our approach, with keyworkers sharing information daily and through formal parents’ evenings held twice a year to discuss progress and next steps.
Independence and self-care skills are actively promoted within this Room. Children are encouraged to brush their teeth during the day and are supported through a full potty-training programme, helping them to become confident and independent in using the toilet. These routines form an important part of our school-readiness approach.
Physical development is a key focus, with children enjoying regular music and movement sessions and ample opportunities for active play in our spacious outdoor garden. The children also benefit from outings within the local community, including visits to the library and trips to the park to feed the ducks, supporting their understanding of the world around them.
School readiness is embedded within our daily curriculum. Children take part in structured learning sessions including:
- PE sessions, promoting physical development, self-help skills and healthy lifestyles
- Science sessions, encouraging curiosity, exploration and investigation
Yoga sessions, supporting core strength, balance, coordination, body awareness and self-regulation - Show and Tell, developing communication, language skills and confidence when speaking in a group.
- A 52-week Letters and Sounds programme, supporting listening and attention skills alongside early phonics and sound awareness.
In addition, children participate in our reading scheme and receive weekly take-home challenges to further support learning at home and strengthen school readiness in partnership with families. This shared approach reinforces key skills and helps parents feel empowered to support their child’s development.
All activities, observations and planning are delivered in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, ensuring every child is supported to reach their full potential and transition confidently to school.
