Welcome to Monkey Puzzle Astwick. A beautiful nursery setting offering outstanding childcare to Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers aged 3 months to 5 years old.
Our nursery provides a nurturing home-from-home environment, for children aged 3 months through to preschool age. With an emphasis on learning through play, our carefully selected team of practitioners ensure your child is cared for in a safe, secure environment with planned activities to keep them engaged whilst having lots of fun.
Our setting is built in a newly refurbished barn which is located in a beautiful countryside in the hamlet of Astwick, right next door to the historic church of St Guthlac. It is an area of both historic and natural beauty where regular outings are arranged so children can freely explore nature to aid their learning and awareness of their surroundings.
Astwick Monkey Puzzle nursery opened in October 2019, and is a purpose build, converted barn, situated on a beautiful working farm. We take 105 children per day and up to 45 staff. It was always my dream to have my own nursery after working for one of the big groups as a Deputy and Nursery Manager, and when I saw Astwick, it was such an amazing environment I knew it was the one.
My vision for the nursery was to create a homely, beautiful environment, to encourage our children to feel safe and secure to learn. We had to capitalise on our outside environment of the farm and did this through a forest school and outdoor learning. We quickly gained families and an amazing team and set those ‘thoughts’ into motion with courses and staff training such as ‘in the moment planning’ and ‘forest school leader’.
We went through covid six months after opening, and came out stronger, with more children and staff joining, wanting to feel safer with more outdoor space, and I am so proud of our team’s commitment in a frightening time, it was a little bit of normality at work for us in such a quiet and worrying time in the world.
Now I employ over 45 staff and have over 160 children on roll, with a waiting list of over 100 children. The nursery achieved the day nurseries award this year for being in the ‘top 20 day nurseries’ in our region and we have been nominated and made the finals in four awards for the NMT awards in November 2022. Our reviews are 5* and our little ones are happy and achieving well with great independence. We achieved a strong ‘good’ in our first Ofsted since opening in June 2023, and our team are great and have taken on many different roles and courses to continue their own development which also helps the children to have more opportunities.
We are a much bigger family now, but I am so proud to say we have kept our ethos and gone further than my original vision and created such a beautiful nursery for our children, staff and families. I now plan to create a similar nursery at Stevenage with the same ethos, as it is what I am passionate about, just in my own community, and I am so excited to make that a reality and meet new children, families and create a new team!
We offer your child the opportunity to learn and play in carefully designed surroundings, that are not only stimulating and creative but provide peace of mind where safety is of the utmost importance.
We have dedicated nursery spaces for the different age ranges, including mobile and non-mobile babies. Each room reflects the seven areas of learning as prescribed in the Early Years Foundation Stage and is designed to be accessible to every child.
When you ask yourself, what’s the best nursery near me, come and see us as we believe it’s Monkey Puzzle Astwick!
Our Vision and Ethos – A Warm Family Approach
At Astwick we really care about our families and genuinely love our children. We go out of our way to help if you need it and believe actions speak louder than words – so always have a hug ready if the children need one and a big smile and warm welcome when they arrive. We want them to be happy and excited to come to nursery and our loving staff will always go the extra mile to achieve this. We show, not just say, we care. Listening and extending their interests and building on their curiosity, ensuring our environment grows and evolves. Our children are at the heart of everything we do.
When life gives you a rainy day, play in the puddles
We love the great outdoors! Wellies are a must!
We have a whole farm to explore and get the children out into the fresh air to learn about and respect nature, jump in muddy puddles, fly a kite or simply run in the fields. We feel it is so important to experience nature, freedom to explore and have a chance to be a inquisitive child in today’s world of technology. We aim for every child to have flown a kite, made a stick wand, visited the lambs or piglets, jumped through huge puddle and picked fruit from a tree before they leave us. We want to give our children adventures. We are passionate that in a World that is ever changing with increasing technology, every child should have a chance to experience the natural environment and explore the great outdoors in their early years.
Aspiration – As a relatively new nursery, we are continuously looking for ways to improve and evolve. Achieving my dream of creating and owning Astwick Monkey Puzzle means I will never stop working to achieve the best and welcome our team and our family’s ideas and suggestions.
Aims
- To maintain a strong family ethos – Happy team – happy children – happy families.
- To learn outdoors and explore our farm environment, learning and developing respect for nature.
- To have adventures and learn through trying, doing and exploring.
- To create a safe, secure and fun nursery environment, implementing aspects of the curiosity approach and outdoor learning activities.
- To celebrate diversity, learn about each other and respect what makes us each unique.
- To build strong trust and bonds with children and their families, recognising they are the child’s most important loved ones and therefore the most important educators.
- To continue to evolve and strive to make the nursery the best it can be.
