FAQs

While the legal requirement to self-isolate has been lifted, we still strongly discourage anyone from attending nursery if they are displaying symptoms of COVID-19. Across our nurseries, we adhere to strict safety procedures to promote hygiene and to minimise spread. Our Covid-19 Safety and Adaptations Policy is available at the nursery and explains our approach to keeping the children, families and our team safe. Where a decision is taken to temporarily close full or part of the nursery due to a COVID-19 related reason, for example a confirmed outbreak or multiple team members needing to isolate, we will apply a 50% refund to parents for any closure days. Where an individual child is required to isolate, but the room or nursery continues to be open to unaffected children and our services will continue to be provided, full fees will remain payable in these circumstances.

At kinderzimmer, our aim is to work in partnership with parents to help them become familiar with the setting and offer a settled relationship for the child. We know children learn best when they are healthy, safe and secure, we build positive relationships with parents to ensure we can meet children’s individual needs and help them settle quickly into nursery life. 

All our staff know about the importance of building strong attachments with children. They are trained to understand the different stages of attachment and use this knowledge to support children and families settling into the nursery.   

The initial experiences with the nursery are vital to a child becoming well-settled and secure in the nursery, and doing this well is something that we take pride in. We aim to make our nursery a welcoming place where children and their families feel comfortable; supporting parents and carers through their entire journey with the nursery.  

We have a wide array of strategies to give your child the smoothest transition into the nursery, and we work with parents and carers to choose which are most appropriate and likely to have the greatest success. These are carefully implemented to complement our welcome commitments, please click here to view our settling in process. 

Full details on our settling in sessions can be found here. 

We partner with a brand called Nursery Kitchen who develop the dishes and make them off-site. They deliver the meals fresh throughout the week and we will cook and serve them in our dedicated kitchens. We do have a dedicated team member who will develop the food plan for the children we have, and considering any allergens or dietary preferences. 

Yes! We head out on weekly Adventure Walks to explore the local area including local libraries, public parks, museums and markets to learn about the local community. We have 6-seater buggy’s for any children learning to walk and older children on walkodiles which supports safety outside the setting. Risk assessments are done for all the visits.  

We also will head out on larger excursions a few times each year to explore what else is around us, such as the National History or Science Museum or other important local community events and locations.  

Leaving the four walls of the nursery is an important part of our curriculum as it broadens children’s experiences which helps build a rich vocabulary and understanding of the world.  

Yes, all of our nurseries accept funding to assist with your child’s early years education. This includes tax-free childcare, 15 funded hours and 30 funded hours. This includes all Government updates in 2024 for younger years. Read more here.

In the baby and toddler rooms we have dedicated sleep areas with subtle lighting and calming music.  Babies are given the same sleep space each day either in one of the sleep coracles or sleep mattresses (age dependent). We have a dedicated safe sleep policy which outlines the support we put in place for healthy happy sleep for all children which attend. We will also share with you our kinderzimmer sleep time playlist, which has been carefully chosen to play calming classical music which is played at every sleep time, you can use this playlist at home to help support sleep at home and at nursery.  

Current guidance is adhered to in regard how babies are put down for a sleep. The legal ratio requirement of 1: 3 remains at all times. The time each child falls asleep, and wakes is added to the kinderzimmer app, in addition each child is monitored during sleep and checks are recorded every 10 minutes however our team never leave the children unattended when sleeping.  

Our educators are all going to be trained in specific areas including music, yoga, cooking and language sessions or any key other key interests of the team.  

That way we make sure that the teacher can deliver the important learning moments across the week and the children are learning from someone they are comfortable with and knows their learning ability and support will be needed to make the learning a success.  

Our nurseries are open Monday to Fridays, from 7:30-18:30. These hours are all included within our daily fee. Drop-off and pick-up times are flexible but we don’t offer half day sessions.

We do not open any hours around this and the setting is closed from 18:30.  

Our nurseries are split between babies (3 months – 2 years), toddlers (2 years – 3 years), and pre-school (3 years – 5 years).

Children will generally be with children in their age group but they may mix, for example in the garden or dining room. We also create learning moments where children can have peer group learning, so there will be times where children can learn from older children, and the older children can learn how to help younger children, which is an important part of our curriculum.  

We follow the legal requirements of children to educator ratios, where are as follows:  

Babies: 1 : 3 

Toddlers: 1 : 5 

Preschool: 1 : 8 

However, our heads are supernumerary, and we have housekeepers as additional support in the settings.  

Our parent brand in Germany that has been running for over 10 years now, with almost 40 nurseries open, mainly in Hamburg. Their ethos and reason for starting up was to bring higher-quality early years education to as many children as possible. 

They wanted to expand this mission to the UK, so we carry that ethos with us. But everything else is localised for parents in the UK; we teach in English and follow Ofsted and Early Years Curriculum. We also have a Support Office, based in London, and our educators are recruitment for the local area to each nursery location.

However as we have a multitude of families that attend with dual languages, we teach the childrens home languages in the settings to support language development and inclusiveness. All children will also learn British Sign language which starts as baby sign language.

We have our own kinderzimmer app which is a dedicated news feed of everything they’ve been up to throughout the day – from monitoring sleep times and seeing what they tried for lunch, to daily activities and tracking developmental progress, the kinderzimmer app houses everything you need to stay in the loop with your child’s day at nursery. Your keyperson or buddy keyperson will update the app with key moments throughout the day and week.  

The kinderzimmer app is powered by Famly, and we are fully compliant with EU GDPR policies and procedures, meaning your child’s information is safe and secure. 

We also offer bi-annual, more formal updates and feedback on their development. Of course, we can have informal conversations at pick-up and drop-off too! 

We offer a sibling discount of 8% which is applied to the eldest child’s monthly fee. This discount can’t be used alongside a full time discount (10%). 

Yes, on the first settle you’ll get to meet your childs key person. They will be responsible for your child’s intimate care, emotional support, sleep times, support with feeding etc. They will ensure that your childs experiences with nursey are nurturing and positive. They will ensure a smooth transition and settle into the setting.  

They will also be responsible for their development and observations and will do termly parents evenings to share support in learning milestones and next steps.  

We do have a buddy key person as well who is there to support your key person and be present for your child if your key person happened to be off unwell, for example. 

Yes, we supply both formula and nappies included in your daily fee. If you want to request a particular formula brand, we can stock this for you. We’re also able to accommodate breast milk, if you are still breast-feeding your little one. 

We make sure to take the children out into our  gardens for a minimum of two hours a day, rain or shine! This is usually one hour in the morning, and one hour in the afternoon. We head out for Adventure Walks to the local community weekly, as well as excursions further afield throughout the year.

However in the fairer weather moments we embrace being outside as much as possible. The only time we will not be outside is thunder/lightening, below 5 degrees weather or above UV 6 weather on very sunny days.