The Baby Room

The Baby Room provides a safe, cosy environment in which we can cherish your baby. We know that parents want the same level of care and attention for their babies, when they can't be with them, that they would give them at home, and that is what we aim to provide.

It goes without saying that our babies receive the best possible physical care, taking into account the latest updates in child care practice. However, we offer much more than this. The Montessori ethos used in Edgbaston Kindergarten places great importance on intellectual, emotional and social development, even at this early age.

The babies have the use of two rooms. The first is their base room where they eat, sleep and enjoy quiet or messy activities. The second room is used for gross motor development and activities to promote hand/eye co-ordination, cognitive, social and language development and the introduction of mathematical concepts such as shape, colour, number, size and position. Our babies' development is monitored at regular intervals, and activities are planned to promote the next milestone along the way, be it learning to sit unsupported, scribbling with a crayon or saying that first word. The babies spend time every day cuddling up on a lap with a picture or storybook to develop a close bond with the staff, and an early love of books.

Language development is very important for this age group. The babies are absorbing all of the knowledge they will need later when they begin to talk themselves. They not only learn the names of objects and actions, they learn about taking turns in conversation, sentence structure, expression and humour. It is vital that babies receive sufficient one to one conversation time to ensure that their language skills are fully developed. At Edgbaston Kindergarten we make sure that each baby is given plenty of one to one conversation and is encouraged to respond and interact with the staff.

Physical and messy play are also important for babies. We aim to take our babies out for a walk at least twice a week weather permitting, either to the local park or the reservoir to feed the ducks. We also have a large garden, of which the babies have exclusive use at certain times of the day for outdoor play activities. We have a range of outdoor play equipment to develop a wide variety of physical skills once the babies become more mobile. Once they are about seven months old, the babies have access to sand and water play equipment and start to discover the joy of painting and crayoning.

Providing this level of care and stimulation requires a high number of staff. The legal requirement is one member of staff to every three babies, the equivalent of a mother looking after triplets. Our Baby Room normally works on the basis of one member of staff to two babies. This means that we have time to do a lot more than just keep the babies clean, fed and dry – we can play with them and make sure that they are stimulated and happy as well!

Parents are often worried by reports in the media about staff being less than caring in some nurseries and quite frankly they are right to be. It is very difficult to identify what makes a good nursery from a single visit and parents are often unsure what to look for. The quality of a nursery has little to do with its appearance or the amount or quality of its equipment. The staff turnover is not even a good indicator, although many parents seem to think that it's important. A nursery manager cannot tell from an interview whether or not a nursery nurse has a genuine love of children, it will only become apparent when she is working with them. If, after a probationary period the manager decides that a nursery nurse doesn't have the right attitude to work with children she would be right to ask her to leave the nursery. This would be in the best interests of the children but would result in a higher turnover of staff than a poor quality nursery which retains poor quality staff because its easier and more cost effective.

The main factor, which affects the quality of a nursery is the number and the quality of staff. Children in some poor quality nurseries get into a habit of crying for attention and sometimes develop a grizzle which carries on throughout the day for no apparent reason. This is usually because their nursery is understaffed or the staff are insufficiently trained or supervised and the children do not have their needs attended to when they arise. The babies in those nurseries quickly learn that they will only get attention if they cry long enough to irritate the staff into action and it gradually becomes a habit. The staff become stressed by the constant crying from so many children and become even less responsive. This can create a viscous circle which results in unhappy, grizzley children and bored, irritable staff.

We have a No Crying policy throughout Edgbaston Kindergarten, which ensures that staff will always take action to identify and remedy the cause of any crying. You may have noticed the difference when you first visited the nursery. Visitors often comment on the lack of crying in all of the rooms and that there is a general happy 'hum' instead. This is not just in the interests of the children but it is to protect the staff from the stress of working all day with crying children.

At Edgbaston Kindergarten, we do not only look after the babies in our care. We know how difficult it can be for parents to adjust to having a new baby in their lives. When the stress of returning to work is added to disturbed nights and feelings of loss or guilt about leaving the baby at nursery, parents can naturally become extremely anxious. We aim to make the transition back to work as smooth as possible by offering support, advice, and as much information as the parents want on their baby's day at nursery. We keep a daily record sheet, which we complete and send home and we ask parents to inform us in the morning of any changes to the baby's routine. This ensures that there is continuity of care between home and the Kindergarten, and no important information is forgotten when the baby is handed over. Our latest OFSTED report described our continuity of care as 'Superb'.

The staff always follow parents' preferences and the baby’s established routine is followed on joining the Kindergarten, wherever possible. We ask parents to provide their baby's usual nappies, cream and wipes, formula or expressed breast milk and we do the rest. There is no need for you to sterilise or make up bottles before bringing your baby in the morning; you are busy enough as it is. Once your baby is mobile and ready to move up to the Toddlers group, he or she will gradually be introduced to the new Key Worker and the other members of the group.

Settling Your Baby In

Before a baby joins Edgbaston Kindergarten, we encourage parents to pay us a short introductory visit with the baby to discuss the baby's routine and to see him or her being handled by our staff. It gives us a chance to clear up any queries we may have about your baby’s feeding or sleeping pattern and what comfort objects he or she likes to go to sleep with etc. It also gives you a chance to ask us any questions you have about our methods and routines. During this visit we will ask you to leave the room for a few minutes so that we can assess how your baby reacts to being left alone with the staff and other babies and if he or she shows signs of separation anxiety.

The settling-in procedure will vary according to the developmental stage of your baby. Separation anxiety (SA) is a natural instinct, which develops to protect babies from wandering away from their parent, once they become mobile. It usually starts at around twelve months, reaches a peak at eighteen months and gradually fades away at around 2 ½ years old when the child has learnt that parents still exist when they are out of sight and always eventually reappear. If a baby is introduced to nursery before SA starts there is rarely a problem settling him or her in and one introductory visit will normally be all that is needed before starting normal attendance.

However, if SA has already started, perhaps because your baby is an early crawler or is normally carried all the time at home, rarely being put down to play, it may take longer to settle your baby in. If this is the case, we usually recommend parents to arrange additional introductory sessions, if possible, with the parent leaving the room for increasing lengths of time until the baby has built up his confidence. Unfortunately it is impossible to tell in advance how a child is likely to react to being left at nursery until it actually happens. No amount of visits with a parent remaining in the room will ease the situation once SA has developed. SA is anxiety about being out of sight of a parent rather than about being in a new environment. Until the baby is actually out of sight of a parent for some time and has learnt to be comforted and distracted by the staff he or she will not start to settle. Our staff are extremely experienced at this and will never just leave a baby to cry. The most important aspect of settling a baby into nursery successfully is for the parents to appear happy and confident about leaving their child at the nursery. Babies are amazingly quick to pick up on their parents' moods and any sign of anxiety by the parent will make the baby anxious as well. We understand completely that parents are bound to be anxious about leaving their baby for the first time in a strange environment. In fact we usually find that the parents will shed more tears than the babies during a settling-in period! We expect this and have tissues and shoulders at the ready. All we ask is that you hand your child over to a member of staff with a smile, and if you are feeling anxious or tearful to express your feelings out of your baby's sight. Try to remember that all of the other children in the nursery experienced the same things as your baby and they are all enjoying themselves, are happy, and well cared for. There is no reason to think that your baby will be any different, and you have the comfort of knowing that you have chosen the best nursery for your child.