This week is one of the busiest around the company as we hold the majority of Christmas parties, nativities, carol concerts and all sorts of other festive fun at the nurseries.  Over the last 6 years we have experimented with lots of different events and have concluded that there is no perfect answer; some parents really enjoy watching a more formal nativity play, whereas others are happy to have a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie and come and join in some carol singing. Generally, the less structured it is, the more the children enjoy it, so don’t worry if it all seems slightly anarchic to you as an adult, that’s preferable to watching your little one looking terrified under a tea towel as they are playing a rather bemused shepherd!

Whatever involvement you have over the next week or two at The Old Station Nursery, I hope you and your child thoroughly enjoy it and remember, we love to hear what you’d like to see or do, so feel free to let us know what you thought worked and didn’t. Most of all, enjoy the run up to Christmas and I hope you share some of the excitement that the children feel at this time of year. Right, must dash, I’m off to see how much of our home-made fudge has survived being wrapped up (and sampled) by my daughter!

It’s been another busy week around the company and I spent some time at our Lincoln College nursery with a photographer, trying to get some good photographs of the children at play.  The old adage of never working with children or animals did spring to mind once or twice, particularly as the children seemed fascinated by Mazz (the photographer), who has the most amazing purple hair! They also loved looking right at the camera lens, very close up, complete with sticky nose and finger prints. 

We usually have photographers in at least once a year for parents to order portraits, which are particularly popular for Christmas presents. However, this time it was for something rather different, as I am currently writing a book which we hope to have out next Spring, which will be a collection of recipes and activities that parents can carry out with their children. So, when you next come into nursery and see them making a lovely sticky mess with cornflour and water, or using soap flake mixture for painting with, you will be able to go home and make a similar mess!  We will also be explaining a bit about child development and how you can help your child to develop language skills, improve their numeracy and generally make good progress across all areas of learning through play. Most of all it will be a fun book and we hope to have some really lovely pictures of children from around lots of the nurseries; so far we have been at Faringdon, Benson, Buckland After-School Club, Newark College, Lincoln College, The Marina and Wragby Road. An enormous thank you to the staff and children at these settings who have been so helpful and I am really looking forward to sorting through the first draft of photos in a week or so.

We’ll keep you posted on progress and will be advertising the book at all the nurseries in the New Year.

It’s been a really great couple of weeks for The Old Station Nursery on the PR front, as we entered 2 different industry awards and were delighted to be short-listed as finalists in both. On the 21st November we were at the Hurlingham Club in London for the Nursery World Awards, where we were shortlisted for Nursery Chain of the Year, Business Development Award and Nursery Manager of the Year. Our Faringdon Nursery Manager, Liz Clements, has been with us since I started the company in 2002 and I was delighted that all her hard work and dedication resulted in her being a finalist in this hotly contested category. Last year she dealt with the flooding at Faringdon so calmly and the nursery didn’t close for a single day, which was truly remarkable. Unfortunately Liz was pipped at the post for the award, but received a special commendation, so we had to remind her that second best Nursery Manager in the country was really pretty impressive!  As a company we did win the Business Development Award, which was really pleasing; the judges recognised how successful the company had been in growing during difficult times in the industry, whilst maintaining high standards and quality provision. 

Last Friday we were then at the London Hilton for the Nursery Management Today Awards (not a magazine featured on ‘Have I got news for you’ guest publications, despite my husband’s rude comments!).  Liz was again shortlisted for Nursery Manager of the Year, against a further 4 finalists and even had to endure an interview for this category a couple of months ago. Sadly, she didn’t walk away with the trophy this time either, but I have told her that there will most definitely be a next time.  However, it was great recognition for a really dedicated, caring individual, so well done to her.

I did have a grumble from one parent recently who said that we should ’stop growing the business’, but I feel that our development has really helped us to make each nursery part of a much larger team, which supports the individual manager more and allows us to develop better Head Office systems, with Operations Managers who can work on improving the standards in the settings.  We have more scope for sharing best practice between the nurseries and also have more opportunities for training and development across the company, so I do believe it is a really positive thing.

It is always great to have external recognition of what we do and to know that our industry peers respect our achievements, but as always, without our fabulous team of staff, it just wouldn’t happen. So, a cheery thought to start this very cold Monday morning - here’s to the great staff team across The Old Station Nursery!