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New Beginnings Nursery care for children between the ages Birth to 5 years.

Look what we’ve been up to in New Beginnings

At New Beginnings Nursery, we provide a warm, nurturing, and stimulating environment where every child can learn, grow, and thrive. Our dedicated team of early years practitioners are passionate about supporting children’s curiosity, creativity, and independence through play-based learning and carefully planned activities. We pride ourselves on building strong partnerships with families, ensuring that each child feels valued, safe, and ready for their next steps in education.

Opening Times
7.30am – 6pm Monday to Friday.
We are closed between Christmas and New Year and every bank holiday.

Prices from May 2025.
£22.50 – half a session (morning or afternoon)
£45.00 – full day
Additional cost of £2.00 7.30 – 8.00 (breakfast included)
Meals – Lunch £1.80. Tea £1.80 (morning and afternoon snacks are included)

Please see link for information regarding help with childcare costs.
https://www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs

Our Ethos

The ethos of a setting is the set of beliefs, morals and ideas fundamental to everything that happens within that setting.

We have revisited our vision and values as a whole nursery, reflecting upon cultural capital, and the EYFS curriculum.

What makes us special and how we prepare our children for their futures success?

The views of our staff, governors, parents and children are essential to what we do, and help us develop our practice.

Our Vision

Is about giving our children the best possible start to their early education. We ensure we build excellent partnerships where everyone is motivated to achieve, enjoy and develop together. Through a safe, stimulating environment we can help our children experience ‘awe and wonder’ of the world in which they live.

Watch our video tour- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrC7J19h9Bw

Little Acorn’s Room – children aged 0-2 years

Oak Leaves Room – children aged 2 – 3 years

Mighty Oaks Room – preschool children aged three plus

Watch our video tour- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrC7J19h9Bw

Our Mission

We will nurture children’s educational, social and emotional development in order that they become independent, responsible and resilient learners.

Our Values

These values underpin our philosophy; independent, caring, inspirational, enjoyment, achievement and partnership

2 Year Old Funding – Am I Eligible?

In addition, many families across Sunderland can benefit from free childcare places for two year olds.

Families must be in receipt of one of the following benefits to be eligible for a place:

• you get Universal Credit, and your household income is £15,400 a year or less after tax (not including benefit payments)
• you get Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) or income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• you get the guaranteed element of Pension Credit
• your child has an education, health and care (EHC) plan, also known as an EHCP
• your child gets Disability Living Allowance (DLA)
• your child has left care under an adoption order, special guardianship order or a child arrangements order

Free 30 hours Childcare for children 9months to 4 years old

From September 2025 if you are a working parent of a child aged 9 month to 4 years, you could be eligible for 30 hours of free childcare!

To find out more, please go to the CHILDCARE CHOICES website  – fill in your details and contact us with your eligibility code to reserve your child’s place!

Places are limited and subject to eligibility and availability

Heuristic play

Heuristic play describes the activity of babies and children as they play with and explore the properties of ‘objects’. These ‘objects’ are things from the real world. For toddlers, the question posed when participating in heuristic play is ‘What can I do with this object?’. Toddlers have a natural curiosity to explore, and experiment with the different ways by investigating with all the physical possibilities of an object, by rolling, filling, stacking, dumping, fitting things inside each other, balancing and manipulating an object in every possible way. By freely exploring in this way they can make discoveries about how the world works, such as gravity, spatial awareness, which builds their cognitive development, hand/eye co-ordination and fine and gross motor skills. These skills are to support the children’s learning and for future success.

Launchpad for Literacy

Launchpad for Literacy is an approach to embed our current practice, pedagogical ethos and learning environment, that focus on children’s skill progress. The skill steps are in relation to early experiences and futures learning by creating opportunities through high-quality interactions involving language enrichment through high-quality teaching and general practice. 

The aims are to:

1) Identifying the impact from implementing a pre ‘literacy’ skills approach in early years.

 2) Exploring an effective pre-skills based approach – Secure foundations, preparing children in readiness for phonics.

 3) Accelerating progress and closing attainment gaps in early years.

To do this we are going to support children’s learning by focusing on Communication and language activities;  Play-based learning;  Interactive story-book reading; Physical and creative activities and by Support for parents to encourage learning at home.

Ofsted 

“Children interact positively and form good friendships with their peers. Staff provide them with a vast number of opportunities to recognise how to manage their own feelings and emotions.”

Ofsted

Read our Ofsted Report

“Staff know children well and are fully aware of what children need to learn next. They frequently observe and assess children from their starting points. Staff take action to narrow any potential gaps in children’s development”

Curriculum

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5 years old. All schools and Ofsted-registered early years’ providers must follow the EYFS, including childminders, preschools, nurseries and school reception classes. There are core documents produced nationally to support us in meeting the requirements. They are available to download below.

 Areas of learning

• Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSE)
• Physical Development
• Communication and Language
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

Characteristics of Effective Learning

• Playing and exploring – engagement
• Active learning – motivation
• Creating and thinking critically – thinking

Safeguarding

If you have a concern about a child or any member of our school community please speak to Mr C. Robson or one of our deputy safeguarding leads, Ms J. Thexton, Mrs A. Cutts (New Beginnings) or Mrs P. Walmsley (Chair of Governors).

Please contact the school office if you wish to speak to any of our named designated persons or would like a copy of our Child Protection Policy.

Special Educational Needs and Disability

New Beginnings welcomes its general responsibilities to the Equality Act 2010, and the Public Sector Equality Duty. Please also refer to our Equality and Diversity Policy (containing Equality information and objectives (public sector equality duty) statement for publication).We are a fully inclusive school. We aim to ensure all children experience a fully accessible environment, curriculum and quality of experience by seeking to remove barriers. This is in accordance with support and advice from external partners such as the Local Authority, specialist SEN support teams, medical professionals and EMAS team where appropriate.

Equality and Inclusion

To ensure no pupils are treat less favourably than their peers, we monitor and review our Accessibility Plan. This plan describes our commitment to disability equality. We firmly believe in equality of opportunity for all and are committed to playing our part in removing barriers actively promoting equality in everything we do. In accordance with the DfE guidelines, as stated in the Equality Act 2010 and the SEND Rangers 2019, we will consider 3 main areas:
1. increasing the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the school’s curriculum,
2. improving the physical environment of the school for the purpose of increasing the extent to which disabled pupils are able to take advantage of education and benefits, facilities or services provided or offered by the school, 
3. improving the delivery to disabled pupils of information which is readily accessible to pupils who are not disabled.

A child in the early years has a recognised disability that will require ongoing support; the early years SEND pathway should be followed.

SEN Report

Compliments and Complaints

New Beginnings Nursery is constantly trying to improve the service delivered. We aim to help all children develop their full potential, achieving the highest possible standards in all aspects of their education.

We want to provide the highest standard of service by continuously improving our systems and methods of working. We need to know when you are unhappy so that we can put it right.  Also, if we get things rights we would also appreciate your comments.

Parents comments

“Both my children started their early education in New Beginnings Nursery. Fantastic environment, professional and very friendly staff. They are more than a nursery they are like an extension to your family, as they really care. I would highly recommend this nursery to anyone.”

“This is a brilliant nursery! Great staff who are also very friendly. My daughter loved this nursery and soon my youngest daughter will attend this nursery too!”