At Stepping Stones, we aim to give your little ones the best possible start in life, whilst caring for them in a home from home environment.
Stepping Stones was established in December 2000 by Gary Holmes and his wife Claire. After 6 successful years, the nursery added an extension to the building and this saw child places increase from 63, to 73.
In 2010, Stepping Stones bought the Arboretum Nursery School and nearly doubled the nurseries capacity from 73 places, to 144. This saw the pre-school section of the nursery move across the car park, to the newly bought building.
In 2017, Stepping Stones extended on site again, increasing capacity from 144 places, to 217. This saw the addition of two purpose built pre-school rooms, a new toddler room, a meeting room and three new offices.
Nutritional and traceable balanced meals are freshly prepared daily on the premises using locally sourced ingredients by our full time qualified chef and kitchen assistant, who have both been working at Stepping Stones for over 10 years.
The menus are displayed each week in every room and outside our purpose-built kitchen. They’re changed termly and also rotate over a four-week period to give variety.
All ingredients used to prepare daily meals contain low sugar and salt and we also cater for special dietary requirements (e.g. culture, religion, vegetarians and allergies). Meals are also adapted for babies and young children for extra peace of mind.
All mealtimes are supervised and the children eat together with the staff in their age based rooms. As with every aspect of your child’s care, this provides an opportunity for social interaction between children and staff allowing stimulating questions to be asked. We believe meal times are an ideal time for teaching and learning.
Breakfast – between 8am – 9.15am
Lunch – 11.30am
Tea – 3.30pm
Water and milk are provided throughout the day and available for older children to access themselves at all times.
Mealtimes are also a time to:
We realise that the safety of your child is of the utmost importance whilst they are in our care.
Here are a few key safety features of Stepping Stones:
Stepping Stones were one of the first nurseries in the city to install a biometric entry system. This system works by recording 38 individual points on a set finger and when visiting or leaving the nursery, it checks at random for 6 points on your finger in its database (this happens in less than a second). When matched, the door is released and the time in or out is logged on our server.
This system allows excellent security and the possibility of multiple members of the family to collect your child without the need for security cards, key fobs or any other item that could be lost, found or lent to someone. There is also the added bonus that you will never forget to bring your finger with you, and hopefully never lose it!
Access times into the nursery at peak times are also very smooth as someone does not have to manually buzz parents and carers into the nursery.
All our rooms currently have two tablets and a computer each. In the modern world we live in, we have found that these enhance the way the children at the nursery develop hey are used at structured times throughout the day.
At Stepping Stones, we believe in all types of education, whereas real play develops all sorts of social skills within children. A touch-screen computer/tablet allows a child to interact and learn on a whole new level. We even have some applications that allow the children to learn in small groups and this gives them great joy in showing each other (and the staff) what they have discovered.
We also use tablets as part of monitoring your child’s progress at Stepping Stones, with the help of a company called Connect Childcare. Our registers are fully digitalised and your child’s learning journey is fully available online and you can even login and see what they have had for dinner!
Tablets and computers can be used to support many aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage:
