Learning Environments

The approach to care and learning at Atelier Nursery is quite simply magical! Sometimes we wonder how to define what to the untrained eye must look a fine line between chaos and cosmos! However, to us as a team of educators and artists, there is simply no other way to work. We would like to invite you, to share the Pedagogy, Provocation and Practice at Atelier Nursery that together makes for a strong, powerful and enabling environment.

There is a seamless flow of learning opportunities presented to children to inspire and engage the children’s individual interests.  This allows children to revisit, extend or adapt their interests and learning as they wish thus ensuring a deep level of engagement and high levels of progress.

Our approach works on the recognition that children, just like adults, learn best when they are able to explore their interests fully and follow their own agendas through play for any given length of time.

Whilst the nursery is designed for children to flow throughout all of the learning spaces provided. We recognise that our youngest babies also need a space to feel ‘nested’.  By ‘nested’ we mean a combination of nurtured, rested and protected and that’s just what our Baby Nest does.

It is a dedicated space for our babies to feel cosy and supported as they make sense of the environment surrounding them.  It allows them to feel secure as they develop their own sense of belonging and in turn stretch themselves to explore and experience new spaces.

In the Baby Nest we have selected resources especially for our youngest children, such as treasure baskets, heuristic play and lights and mirrors that all offer a sensory experience.

The indoor sleep room linked to the baby nest is a quiet space where children can choose to curl up in one of the specially designed nests or sail away to the land of dreams in their very own coracle.

At Atelier we recognise babies as strong, competent and capable learners. 

The Snug has been created as a space focused on our youngest children. Planned to complement the Baby Nest, the Snug seeks to offer a range of resources that invites the natural curiosity of our youngest children. They can explore experiences including sensory play, early construction, imaginative play, and the exploration of materials such as clay and malleable resource.

Seeking to support the growing independence of our toddlers the Snug offers opportunities for our younger children to experience the resources available to them across the wider nursery, yet on a slightly smaller scale and at a lower height. This space allows children to gently stretch the invisible elastic held between child and key person, it encourages exploration, yet provides subtle reassurance. The soft spaces created in the Nest allow children to simply be. It is a space, children often move into when they need to simply be restful or take time to reflect on their play.

The Discovery Room is an area of adventure and imagination!

We recognise that children are active learners from birth and learn best when they are free to discover for themselves. The Discovery room is an ideal space for all our future scientists and mathematicians as it provides an opportunity for children to explore and investigate, to make new discoveries of the world around them and to reflect on how things work and why things happen.  

From observing the tadpoles grow into froglets or making use of the indoor beach to pour, fill, mix and contain.  It all happens in the Discovery Room. 

Within this space, children are able to make scientific discovery and new connections in their thinking, as well as also develop the life skills of co-operation, negotiation and satisfaction, and of course it’s always good to feel the sand between your toes!

The Piazza is a central meeting point in the nursery and represents a space in which children come together to share their ideas and thoughts.

It’s all about design and construction in the Piazza. Following the national findings that boys have lower literacy and numeracy rates than girls, the Piazza was initially designed with our boys in mind.

Identifying that our boys learnt best through large scale play. Design and construction became our focus. Taking inspiration from architecture and engineering from across the world, with our large range of maple blocks children are encouraged to develop their curiosity as they design, represent, recreate and construct developing fundamental skills for future learning such as involvement, motivation, and perseverance.

Over recent years we have seen our boys make progress well above national levels simply by taking the time to stop and think about how they want to learn.

That said we are sure, we will have just as many future female architects in the making as our girls continue to push ahead and make the most of this space too!

Although all the areas within the nursery encourage children to be creative and imaginative, the studio has been designed to really let the imagination of our children fly!

Lead by our Resident Artist, the Studio is a space not just for painting, sticking and cutting out; but is where our children immerse themselves in a range of creative opportunities with the highest quality media and resources leading to truly inspired work.

Within the studio, many creative projects take place. We believe that children are capable of leading their own learning and so supported by our resident artists and team of educators the studio is a space in which children build upon their own theories, making sense of the world around them through research and via the provocations presented to children.

The Cabin subtly links our learning that takes place in the outdoors to the rest of the nursery. Its focus is to facilitate exploration of the outdoor environment; the natural world and early science.

The Cabin captures curiosity and challenges children’s thinking.  With opportunities ranging from potion making at the mud kitchen, to observing bees in their hive and experiencing first-hand the honey collected and wax made. The cabin offers a wealth of real-life learning for our children.  It is a calm, almost secret space where children flourish in the opportunity to learn outdoors, extending their thinking and sense of responsibility to the world.

At Atelier Nursery, the outdoor learning environment is as important as the rooms indoors and we encourage children to spend as much time outside as they wish.  The garden is viewed as a ‘classroom without walls’,  where children can discover and explore.  The garden offers the opportunity for children to plant, grow and harvest their own vegetables, to dance, re-enact their favourite play on the stage, become skilful communicators in our story hut or take a moment to reflect and think in the wig-loo or whilst swinging in the tree.

Of course on the lower garden there is plenty of space for the bikes and ride-ons that help to develop children’s physical development.  Children are also given the opportunity to sleep outdoors in our unique garden bedroom, where the sound of rustling bamboo and babbling water ease children off to sleep.

Our Local Offer

 Information about what Atelier Nursery provides for children and their families with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND).