Starting at Sunshine
Our staff look forward to showing you and your child around our nursery. Please contact us to arrange a suitable appointment. Please feel free to spend as much time with us as you need and to ask lots of questions.
Once you have registered with us, we are happy for you and your child to attend as many settling-in sessions as required prior to their start date at nursery. We recommend that you attend at least three sessions, but we often find that very young children require more than this in order for feel safe and secure at nursery. The settling-in session times are 10 to 11am and 2:30 to 3:30pm.
Ideally, you should book your sessions at least three weeks in advance of the start date. Please be aware that the nursery staff may request that you bring your child for more settling-in sessions if they feel he or she needs more time. If you have never left your child with anyone else before, or if you feel that your child may have difficulty settling, please ensure that you allow time for plenty of settling-in sessions. This will make it much easier for your child to adapt to their new routine and enjoy their time at nursery.
We require parents/carers to stay with their child on the nursery premises for their first settling-in session. This gives both staff and parents the opportunity to talk and ask questions, seek information and start to get to know each other.
Items to Bring to Nursery
We recommend that you bring the following items to nursery:
• Nappy cream (if required)*
• Spare clothes
• Sunhat and suncream* for the summer months
• Feeding bottles should be prepared at home and brought into the nursery clearly named
• Dummies should be placed in a named container
• Breakfast, lunch and tea as required
* We ask that any cream is in the original container and clearly named. We will require you to complete and sign a medical form to grant our staff permission to apply the cream.
Items the Nursery provides
• Healthy snacks, ordinary cows milk and water
• Nappies and wipes
• A named peg for personal belongings
• A nursery rucksack for lunch, spare clothes etc
• Lunch for an additional cost
Weaning
Where possible, we recommend that your child is feeding well from a bottle (formula milk or expressed breast milk is fine) when they start nursery. Babies who have only ever been breast fed can sometimes reject the bottle if it is not introduced early. We recommend that you seek advice from your health visitor if you plan to continue breast feeding when your child starts nursery.
Starting solid food is an important step for your baby, and the nursery staff will give you every support. However, we do recommend that you seek advice from your health visitor before your baby starts solid food. We also recommend that you introduce solids yourself at home before bringing meals to nursery for your baby. It may be advisable to wait until your baby’s routine for solid food is well established before commencing nursery.
Our staff are happy to give advice on healthy foods suitable for your babies stage of development, please feel free to discuss this, or any other issue with them at any time.
