Dee's Childcare Vision, Mission and Culture Statement
Our Vision: To be a provider of quality childcare, supporting children to acquire skills and experiences that prepare them for their learning journey, to empower them to achieve greatness.
Our Mission: We aim to inspire growth in our children, helping them to live their best lives by providing stimulating learning experiences, a healthy lifestyle, and a safe place to learn, play and grow. With a team of friendly, qualified assistants, Dee’s Childcare goes above and beyond to offer the children a home from home environment where independence and resilience are encouraged and nurtured.
Our Culture: How we stay Outstanding…
Parents/ children
Uniqueness – We will always look for ways of standing out and differing from other childcare providers. We strive to ensure children are learning, playing and growing through tailored activities to meet their individual needs.
Knowledge – We are Early Years educators that encourage children to independently make decisions to dictate their paths enabling a sense of enjoyment. We do this by imparting practical and usable knowledge rather than just theory.
Cooperation and Partnership – We will work to nurture the relationships with families to provide the support needed to develop children to fulfil their potential at each stage of their development.
Commitment to delivering value – We will work to provide value for money by providing a unique service in an enriched and enabling environment to help children learn, play and grow. We will do this by committing to give 100% to a varied and diverse curriculum that incorporates learning within the natural outdoor environment.
Easter Holiday Club
Fanny on the Hill Park Trip
Was it cold? yes! But this didn't stop our fun day out. To fuel us for the trip, Aunty Leiba prepared the yummiest homemade hummus with carrot and cucumber sticks. After we were all fuelled up we got suited and booted...literally! With our wellie boots and suits on it was time to get into the bus ready to travel down to Fanny on the Hill Park. Packed lunches and water bottles ready to go with us so we set off. As we arrived a little late, it was time to sit down and have our picnic before we did lots of running around. Thank you to all the mummies and daddies who prepared yummy healthy-packed lunches. The wind was so strong at one point it tried to take our packed lunches away but we saved them. Next, it was time to run around and have some fun. The park was filled with lots of equipment and we were spoilt for choice. Aunty Decima challenged everyone even the Caterpillars to go on the swirly big slide that's usually for the big children. It had a big long ladder but everyone was really brave and went down the slide with the help of the adults. We went on swings, slides, monkey bars, and roundabouts. It was a successful trip and most of us had naps on the way back to the setting. Look out for all the picture uploads from our fun day out! (write up by Adonia)
Horniman Museum Trip
You should have been there... Where? on our trip to the Horniman Museum today. We started our day by walking through the beautiful nature trail gardens at the museum. Many new plants had just been planted and others were already in full bloom... Thankfully the weather held up for us. Walking the trail helped everyone to work up an appetite, so we stopped to tuck into our tasty packed lunches... Tummies satisfied, we headed for the museum. Our first stop, was the nature rooms where the children happened upon a wide range of familiar and not so familiar animals like orange orangutan monkeys, foxes, and ostriches. The children were so excited. Next, we visited the interactive Cats & dogs exhibit room, where the children could see how high they could jump compared to cats and dogs, solved puzzles, and learned a few doggie tricks. We couldn't leave without visiting the Hair exhibit and were so amazed to see how people of different cultures use, treat and handle hair in many different ways... Check out our gallery for a little of what you missed. #werechildrenlearnplayandgrow (write up by Adonia)
Easter Fun Day
Our annual Easter Fun Day never disappoints, as there's so much fun to be had by everyone. In spite of the chilly weather, we had an array of activities set up for the children to enjoy...
We started with the staff ably assisted by the older Butterflies hiding the colourful Easter eggs all around the enchanted garden for the caterpillars and cocoons to find, before the Butterflies were able to do their own very active Easter egg hunt. The ultimate goal is to find the amazing Golden Easter egg, which makes the events all the more competitive as it gives the finder a wonderful prize.
Face painting, hosted by Niah, is always a very popular side event, where we end up with bunny's, butterflies, fairies, flowers and the like and of course the obligatory superheroes (Spiderman being a particular favourite at the moment). Our newly introduced Tattoo Booth, hosted by Karis, was a massive success and will definitely make a reappearance next year. We enjoyed arts n crafts activities during the day and got the children involved in dying real boiled eggs before the event, which they could eat if they wanted to.
The ultimate 'FUN' in Fun-day had to be the Parent Egg n Spoon races. Parents ran, parents balanced, parents wobbled and children giggled, as eggs fell and were picked up, as the children watched and cheered for mummy or daddy to win! What better way to spend a Friday afternoon? The sun may have stayed away, but the joy and laughter from our children and families and the personal appearance of the lovely Easter Bunny, was enough Sunshine to brighten up our Easter Fun Day!!!
Dates for your Diary
30th May - 3rd June - Half-Term (closed to term time only children)
2nd June- Spring Bank Holiday SETTING CLOSED
3rd June- Platinum Jubilee Bank Holiday SETTING CLOSED
19th June- Father's Day
24th July- Summer BBQ 1.00 pm - 4.00 pm - All the children past and present and their families are invited
25th July - Inset Day - SETTING CLOSED for Staff Training
26th July - 2nd September Summer Holiday Club
29th August-Summer Bank Holiday SETTING CLOSED
5th September Inset Day - SETTING CLOSED for Staff Training
6th September - Start of New Term- Open for all children
Birthdays and monthly birthday parties
We love to celebrate the children's birthdays and usually, we have a joint party on the last Thursday of each month for all the children who are born in that month. We are happy to decorate and provide the music, games, and snacks but we would like to ask the parents to bring a cake, snacks and party bags. All food contributions need to be nut and dairy free. Thank you!
Working in partnership with parents
Working in partnership with our parents and families is at the forefront of the organisation. We recognise that parents are their child’s first educators and aim to build solid, open, and honest partnerships with them by involving parents and carers from the very first visit to the Daycare, transition period, settling in, and daily chats, to sharing of resources, communications, social events, and information sessions.
We will work together to provide the support needed to develop children to fulfill their potential at each stage of their development.
For a successful partnership, we need the same effort on both sides, therefore, to encourage the parents to participate actively we have introduced Parent of the Month award.
Continuing learning and development at Home
For the parents of the children in the Baby Caterpillars and Caterpillars groups, we have provided reading journals. Please make sure to add your comments and return the journals and library book in time.
For the parents of the children in the Cocoons and preschoolers groups, we have created personalized Learning Packs for school readiness. Please make sure that you take the time to continue practicing at home. On Baby's Days, in the Documents section, we have created a folder "Getting ready for school" with lots of useful information for you to read.
Complaints procedure and Invitation to write reviews
We hope that you will always be happy with the service that we provide, however, we appreciate there may be times when we may not offer you and your child the service that you require. We hope that you will feel comfortable enough to discuss any concerns or issues that may arise directly with us in the first instance. If you would rather not talk in front of your child, we can arrange a more convenient time, for example in the morning when you drop your child off or in the afternoon/evening before you pick them up. For more information on our Complaints Procedure, please go the the Policies Section on Baby's Days .
If you are happy with our services, we'd love for you to leave us a review on Facebook or Google. Reviews help us strengthen our place in the community and encourage new families to feel confident to contact us for future partnerships.
You can leave a review on our Facebook page or on Google Reviews.
Signal Groups
We wanted to share this little reminder with you and also for the benefit of our new parents, how we use the various Signal groups.
First, there's the Parents Forum - used to share information that is relevant for ALL Dee's Childcare families regardless of the age of your child, ie. Term dates, Closures, Disruptions, New Protocols etc. NO Personal information about your child should be shared here.
Caterpillars & Cocoons - used to share general information relevant to parents of ALL our children aged under 1 year to 4 years old, ie. Trips, packed lunches, pick-ups, and drop-offs, running late, not in today, sick and general requests or information for or about things like sunscreen, sun hats, sandals, etc.
The Butterflies group - used for children 4 years and older who are attending school, again general information such as pickups drop-offs, absence from school, non-pick-ups, etc. Trips and other requests specific to this group of Children only.
When to message your child's Keyworker directly - if you are dealing with a personal matter pertaining to your child only, it is appropriate to message your Keyworker directly. If your child's Keyworker has advised you of a matter in a message just to you, please reply only to your Keyworkers message and not in any of the groups.
Please DO NOT message your child's attendance only to the Keyworker, as they too could be absent that day.
Matters relating to payment of fees, invoices, charges, change of your childs contractual attendance days etc. should be dealt with as a message in the Babysdays message system.
A lot to take in, but in the interest of privacy, confidentiality and compliance with GDRP we must make every effort to get used to it. Thank you.
Introduction of new menus
Children start learning about food at a very early age. The messages they receive during this time lay the foundations for the choices they make about food as they move up to school and beyond. We serve plant-based, healthy, balanced, and nutritional foods, to encourage energetic, healthy, and happy children within our daycare.
We provide breakfast, a morning snack, balanced lunch, and an afternoon snack. Our menus are carefully planned and freshly prepared by our experienced chef.
We make every effort to make mealtimes fun and an opportunity to learn – meals are served family style, sitting around a uniquely place set table, so that children quickly grasp key skills and food etiquette – setting the table, serving themselves, using appropriate cutlery, sharing conversation and clearing away afterwards.
If your child has any special dietary needs based on medical/allergy conditions, religious, or cultural requirements, just let us know, we will try to work with you, but we may need you to supply food from home.
Annual Summer BBQ
We will be hosting our annual Summer BBQ in our garden on Sunday the 24th of July from 1 pm-4 pm. All the children and their families are invited! We look forward to a fun day together!
Summer Club
As the Summer Holidays are approaching, we are preparing for our own Summer Club, filled with adventure and exciting trips. If you want to enroll, please speak to a member of staff to let them know.
We use an online system Baby’s Days, it is the the most advanced online software system, conforming fully with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework and designed and developed to assist childcare providers with the daily tasks of monitoring the children in our care. When signing your contract with us, you were informed that you were committing to login into the system weekly/daily which actively supports our aspirations and the Ofsted requirement of working in partnership with parents. The system provides parental access to view all policies and permissions, contracts, a child’s learning journal, daily notes with photos and videos, medical records, and invoices, to name a few.
**It is a legal requirement that we complete learning journals inline with the EYFS for all children under 5, by entering into a contract you are committing to working in partnership with Dee’s Childcare by accessing and updating the system on a weekly basis**
Spring Photo Galleries
Please have a look at our website
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Read our Freeindex Reviews
and our Google Reviews
Credits:
Created with images by Lema-lisa - "field of daisies on a summer day with sunlight" • Piman Khrutmuang - "calendar page close up on blue background business planning appointment meeting concept"