News from Treetops Nursery, Willesden, London NW10: Latest blogs posts

Childcare, Childcare Funding, Early Years Education, Education, Nursery & Pre-School, NW10, Parenting, Willesden

FREE Childcare for 3 & 4-Year-Olds – A Complete Guide

In our last post, we published a complete guide to free childcare for 2-year-olds in England. Now it’s time to look at the free childcare funding available for 3 and 4-year-old children. With up to 30 hours of free childcare available in this age group, this represents a great opportunity for parents or guardians to continue with their careers and boost household income, particularly following maternity or paternity leave. It’s also wonderful for the children, who will naturally benefit from early years education and be better prepared for school when the time comes at age 5.

So, how does the 30 hours of free childcare funding work, and who is eligible?

How 15-30 hours of free childcare funding works

This is funding that comes from the Government, via local councils, to pay for childcare at nurseries, pre-schools and similar approved childcare providers. The funding goes direct to the childcare settings or providers, not to the parents or guardians of the children. There are two possible halves — 15 hours of free childcare and an additional 15 hours on top of that, potentially taking the total available up to 30 hours of free childcare for each child.

The first 15 hours of free childcare

The first 15 hours of free childcare for 3 and 4-year-olds in England is very straight forward. In essence, all 3- and 4-year-olds in England are entitled to the 15 hours of funding for childcare each week. Well, to be more precise, the scheme allows for 15 hours per week spread out over 38 weeks in any one year. That’s a total maximum of 570 hours a year. However, so long as the total hours in any given year does not exceed 570, some childcare settings will allow parents or carers to spread the free childcare out over a different number of weeks, simply by adjusting the number of hours used during each of those weeks appropriately.

Eligibility for 15 hours of childcare funding:

All 3- and 4-year-olds living in England are eligible (and there are also similar schemes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
The free childcare funding can only be used in conjunction with approved childcare settings and providers. Treetops Nursery in Willesden is one such approved nursery.
The children are eligible from the term* following their 3rd birthday, until they reach compulsory school age or start Reception Year at school.
* (Terms usually start in early January, April or September).
The 15 hours of funding is not means-tested, nor is it related to whether or not the parent or guardian is working or unemployed etc.
The Government funding does not include food and consumables (nappies, sun cream etc.), so you will need to check this with your individual childcare provider.

30 hours of free childcare

30 hours of free childcare funding is also available for eligible families. However, it includes the first 15 hours explained above, plus a possible additional 15 hours per week, when eligible. This takes the total amount of free childcare available to a possible maximum of 1140 hours per year, or 30 hours per week spread out over 38 weeks. As with the first ‘15 hours’ scenario, some childcare providers allow it to be spread out over more of the year, so long as the number of hours per week is reduced accordingly. And, as before, the free childcare funding can only be used with approved childcare providers like Treetops Nursery, Willesden.

Eligibility for 30 hours of childcare funding:

You and your partner, if you have one …

21 October 2020/by Mark

Childcare, Childcare Funding, Early Years Education, Education, Nursery & Pre-School, Parenting, Willesden

FREE Childcare for 2-Year-Olds – A Complete Guide

Have you heard about the free childcare funding that’s available for eligible 2-year-olds? Do you want to learn more? If you are a parent who is looking to work, or perhaps to get back into work after starting a family, then this could be a perfect solution for you and your toddler. Under a Government scheme, approved nurseries, pre-schools and childcare providers in England can supply up to 15 hours per week of childcare for eligible 2-year-olds. It’s an absolute no-brainer, so we thought we’d put together this comprehensive guide to tell you everything you need to know.

The benefits of free childcare for 2-year-olds

Free childcare hours will be a great help to families:

It will help those on maternity or paternity leave to re-enter the workplace more easily, knowing that their young child is being cared for in a safe and secure environment.
For up to 15 hours a week, the childcare will be funded by the Government, free of charge, enabling families to boost household income and quality of life.
The 2-year-olds benefit greatly as it allows them to make an early start on their education and development. They can prepare for school for around three years and hit the ground running there when they reach the age of five.

A Department of Education study showed that children who start early education no later than the age of two will have long-term benefits including enhanced abilities, better confidence and improved social skills, to name just a few. Studies also show that even their lifetime outcomes and future employment potential are improved if they started early years education and care by the age of 2. The greatest benefits were seen by those children receiving at least 10 hours per week. So, with 15 free hours a week on offer for free, it’s something that every parent in England should at least consider.

How it works

It’s quite straight forward. First, it’s wise to do a rough check to see whether you/your child is likely to be eligible (see the next section below for that). If it looks like you are eligible, you can apply for the funding via a Government website – more about that later. If you are approved, your child can begin free childcare from an approved childcare provider (… such as Treetops Nursery in Willesden). The Government will pay the cost of the childcare, up to 15 hours per week for 2-year-olds, direct to the childcare provider. Your child can begin receiving the childcare in the year in which they reach the age of 2. Which term they start in depends upon the month of their birthday so, in real terms, they usually begin on, or soon after, the 1st of January, 1st of April or 1st of September.

Eligible 2-year-olds can receive up to 570 hours of free childcare over the course of a year. Usually that is taken as 15 hours per week over 38 weeks. However, some childcare providers allow it to be a little more flexible with, perhaps, less hours per week but over more weeks of the year, so long as the total is no more than 570 hours overall.

Eligibility requirements for free childcare funding for 2-year-olds

In order to be eligible for the free childcare funding, either

the parent(s) need to be receiving one or more of the requisite ‘qualifying benefits’ or
the 2-year-old must fall into a qualifying ‘additional needs’ category.

We’ll explain more about each one …

29 September 2020/by Mark

Early Years Education, Education, Nursery & Pre-School, Parenting, Willesden

Boost Your Child’s Language Skills by 20% Through Reading

Back in July, we wrote a detailed article about the importance of parental involvement in the education of children. One critically important element of that is parents or carers actively reading with their children. Indeed, parent-child reading has been proposed as a possible solution to the performance deficit often experienced by children from lower socio-economic backgrounds (through no fault of their own). That makes parent-child reading incredibly important as a way of evening up the playing field and ensuring that pre-school children are completely prepared when the time comes to move to school and beyond. If not, research shows that they are likely to do worse at school and go on to have poorer life outcomes generally.

The research is compelling

A study funded by the Nuffield Foundation, whose mission is to advance educational opportunity and social wellbeing, looked at the impact of adult-child reading from data gathered over 40 years. The results are frankly astounding.

“Reading with pre-school children boosts language skills by eight months.”

That’s incredible when you bear in mind that the children studied were, on average, just 3¼ years old. An 8 month skills boost is therefore equivalent to an extra fifth of their entire lives! Such an impact, at a time when they’re right in the middle of their pre-school years, is incredibly important for them. After all, this is a critical time in their learning and development — and one that will have a profound impact on the rest of their lives.

Reading with children is the key

You may have noticed that we said reading with children, rather than to them. It makes sense to involve the children in the reading process, so they learn from parents/carers and pick up little nuggets of information and know-how as they progress, together, through each book. For example, parents can

16 September 2020/by Mark

Food for toddlers, Healthy eating, Nursery & Pre-School, Nutrition, Willesden

Fighting Food Fussiness in Under-5s

Many parents will be all-too-familiar with how fussy toddlers can be when it comes to food. Some children will even avoid certain foods, absolutely refusing to try them, based solely on how they look. This can be infuriating! In the extreme, it can also potentially pose a risk to the healthy balance of a child’s diet.

Give peas a chance!

Many adults, myself included, will recall that we were just the same at some point during childhood. Later on, we may realise how delicious something really is, even if we thought we didn’t like it when we were young. I recall believing that peas were incredibly dull and should be avoided at all costs, for example. I now believe them to be amongst the tastiest vegetables on the planet! Nothing material has really changed about peas, so it’s my perception of them that has changed; I simply needed to give them a chance.

Acquired tastes

Other foods can become an ‘acquired taste’. For example, many youngsters initially perceive olives as being quite disgusting. Later on as adults, however, many of the same people end up adoring them. Sometimes, it’s just a case of mentioning this weird facet of human nature to your toddler. Trying to reason – and empathise – with them in this way may well register with them eventually. Despite appearances, children often take such messages in, even though they might refuse some foods, point blank, at first. This eventual acceptance often gradually occurs as they become more mature in mind as well as in body.

Food refusal is normal, so don’t stress

If your child’s refusal to eat certain foods is making you stressed, take a moment to realise that this is perfectly normal. Indeed, many toddlers go through such a phase in their earliest years. If they’ve recently been breastfeeding, they will have become accustomed to a sweet-tasting diet. When they are weaned onto solids and suddenly become mobile, it’s natural for them to be wary of eating just anything — it’s so new to them. In fact, refusing some foods is an instinctive survival mechanism. It’ll take time for them to become accustomed to new tastes and textures.

“If your child gives you a resounding no, try, try and try again.”

What’s more, it’s known that it can take about 10 to 15 instances of exposure to a particular food before many young children will accept it. So, if your child gives you a resounding no, it’s really best for both of you to try, try and try again. After all, it would be such a shame for them to miss out on something delicious and nutritional for the rest of their lives.

What else can parents do?

As well as the straight forward perseverance approach outlined above, there are a number of things that parents and carers can do to encourage preschoolers to eat a more varied diet and to give new food types a try …

14 August 2020/by Mark

Early Years Education, Education, Nursery & Pre-School, NW10, Parenting, Willesden

EVERY Parent Should Read This

Research has repeatedly proved that parents have an enormous impact on their children’s education, particularly if they’re involved right from the early years. That impact can be hugely positive if the parents get it right. In this article, we explore the many benefits of parental involvement in children’s education, how parents can support their children from nursery to university, improve their success, maximise their personal and career potentials and thereby give children the very best start in life. That is priceless.

“It has been proven time and time again that parents who invest time and place value on their children’s education will have children who are more successful in school.” (Meador)

The positive impact of parental help for children cannot be overstated. A well-supported child will go on to get better grades and ultimately be eligible for wider, higher quality, career choices once they’re older and ready to leave education. So the message is: if you’re a parent that wants your child to do as well as possible in their education and development, then your child needs your support. Be ready for the long-haul, though, because they will need your support at nursery, throughout their school years and even into higher education.

Research¹ has shown that parents can help improve their child’s development and education irrespective of: how well they did at school themselves; their socioeconomic status and ethnic/racial background.

What are the benefits of closer parental involvement?

As we mentioned above, parental involvement in a child’s development and education can ultimately lead to better results in school and enhanced life choices later on. That’s just the tip of the ice berg, though. Benefits for the child include

16 July 2020/by Mark

News, Nursery & Pre-School, NW10, Social Media, Willesden

Follow Treetops Nursery on Social Media — for the Latest Information

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that we’ve got a sparkling new website. It’s user-friendly, works nicely on mobile phones and it’s going to be much easier for us to keep up to date. That means that we can keep you better informed — great news! Our plan is to publish several high quality articles on the new blog area each and every month. We’ll keep our new social media channels up to date with information, images, nursery- and early years-related news too. We’re now on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Business (our profile links are below).

We can keep you better informed

Treetops Nursery is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram & Google Business

With a view to that, we’d like to invite you to follow us on social media and to regularly visit our news blog. By doing so, you’ll be able to keep up to date with the nursery and childcare in general. Parents across the UK should find the information we’ll publish very useful even if they don’t have children at our Willesden nursery. Our plan is to write and publish some extremely useful articles that’ll appeal to a wide audience of parents, wherever they are. This will include comprehensive guides to topics like childcare funding in the UK, ‘evergreen’ articles about education for babies and toddlers, parenting, the curriculum, activities and all manner of useful, original and informative content. If this sounds of interest, please follow us:

On Facebook we are @TreetopsNurseryNW10, so our Facebook profile is at https://www.facebook.com/treetopsnurserynw10/
On Twitter we are @TreetopsNW10, so you can see our Twitter channel at https://twitter.com/treetopsnw10
On Instagram we are @TreetopsNurseryNW10, so you can find selected images and videos of the nursery at https://www.instagram.com/treetopsnurserynw10/
On Pinterest we are @TreetopsNurseryWillesden, so you can see images and videos that we’ve pinned at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/treetopsnurserywillesden/
On Google Business we are @treetops-nursery, so you can view our Google ‘maps’ profile here (great for directions) or our main Google profile here.
We’ll develop our YouTube channel in due course and will let you know when we add new videos, so watch this space.

We’d love a review, recommendation or feedback

Reviews are incredibly important to small businesses like ours, and a little goes a long way. So, if you’re on Facebook or Google, we’d love it if you could leave a nice review or recommendation for Treetops Nursery please. It’s wonderful to hear

29 June 2020/by Mark

Coronavirus, COVID-19, Health & Safety, Nursery & Pre-School, NW10, Safety Measures, Social Distancing, Willesden

Social Distancing & Anti-Virus Measures at Treetops Nursery

At our Willesden nursery and pre-school, and other nurseries within our group, we looked after children of key workers during the lock-down. This all went very well indeed and we’re very happy to report that there was not a single case of COVID-19 within any of the nurseries, their staff, children, babies or immediate families. This is a testament to the safeguarding measures put in place and also to everyone following the advice of the nurseries, NHS and Government. Thanks to everyone for taking such good care — it worked!

The nursery has re-opened!

We’re very pleased to announce that Treetops Nursery has now re-opened, so we’re welcoming existing families back at the same time as inviting new children who need a safe childcare place in the Willesden area of NW10.

How are we protecting children from COVID-19?

Now that we’re emerging from the lock-down, it’s more important than ever to exercise social distancing, cleanliness and best practise measures to keep everyone safe and well going forwards. With more people now mixing again, this is more important than ever. With that in mind, we have introduced leading-edge measures to safeguard everyone attending the nursery and preschool. With our owners having medical backgrounds, we are uniquely positioned to ensure that these are the best safeguarding measures possible. They also go far beyond Government and NHS guidelines. So, the message is:

We have incredibly strong measures to keep babies & children safe from C-19

So what are the new health and safety measures? While the following is not an exhaustive list, it’ll give you an insight into the kind of protocols we’re putting in place at the setting …

What are our anti-virus safety measures at the nursery?

It’s an absolute given that we’re practising social distancing at the nursery. We’ve taken this several steps further, though, to absolutely minimise any risks:

12 June 2020/by Mark

Latest News & Information

FREE Childcare for 3 & 4-Year-Olds – A Complete Guide

How 15-30 hours of free childcare funding works

The first 15 hours of free childcare

Eligibility for 15 hours of childcare funding:

30 hours of free childcare

Eligibility for 30 hours of childcare funding:

FREE Childcare for 2-Year-Olds – A Complete Guide

The benefits of free childcare for 2-year-olds

How it works

Eligibility requirements for free childcare funding for 2-year-olds

Boost Your Child’s Language Skills by 20% Through Reading

The research is compelling

Reading with children is the key

Fighting Food Fussiness in Under-5s

Give peas a chance!

Acquired tastes

Food refusal is normal, so don’t stress

What else can parents do?

EVERY Parent Should Read This

What are the benefits of closer parental involvement?

Treetops Nursery

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