Our Courtyard is a large and stimulating space for children aged over two, offering a wide variety of active, creative, sensory and imaginative experiences. Its specially designed safety surface allows children to explore with growing confidence.

The outdoor climbing equipment and climbing walkway encourage children to challenge themselves while developing their balance, coordination, strength and confidence in their physical abilities.

Our large sandy beach area provides endless opportunities for digging, building, measuring and exploring different textures, which inspires imaginative adventures and collaborative role play.

Nearby, the mud café encourages children to create their own recipes, serve their friends and transform natural materials into wonderful inventions. Children can also pick herbs to add to their creations, helping them explore different scents, textures and ingredients.

Budding builders can get creative in our dedicated construction area, using resources such as real bricks and guttering to design, build and solve problems. A separate maths area provides opportunities to count, sort, categorise, compare and measure through practical play.

Mark-making opportunities are available throughout the garden, including chalkboards and clear Perspex panels for painting. These large-scale activities allow children to express their ideas while strengthening the movements and coordination needed for early writing.

Children can explore sound, rhythm and movement in the music area and at the music wall. A selection of physical activities is also available, including football, bats and balls, hoops and group games.

The Courtyard includes a track for bicycles and ride-on cars, giving children space to practise steering, build gross motor skills and enjoy energetic play alongside their friends.

For quieter moments, children can enjoy books in the outdoor reading corner or settle into our cosy wooden house. Complete with cushions and fairy lights, it provides an inviting place for stories, conversation, imagination and relaxation.

Nature comes to life in our planted tractor tyres, where children can observe the trees changing through the seasons and watch them bear fruit. These experiences encourage curiosity and help children learn about growth, nature and the world around them.

Our undercover garden enables children to enjoy outdoor play and fresh air in a more sheltered environment throughout the year.

The space includes an age-appropriate climbing frame where children can practise climbing, balancing and moving safely. A ball pit provides additional opportunities for active and sensory play, while bicycles and ride-on cars encourage movement and coordination.

Children can explore sound and rhythm at the music wall or enjoy stories and quiet time in the reading corner. The colourful animal artwork displayed around the space creates a bright, welcoming environment and encourages conversation, recognition and imaginative play.

This versatile area is especially valuable during changeable weather, helping us make outdoor experiences a consistent part of each child’s nursery day.

Our three Pre-School rooms—Butterflies, Grasshoppers and Dragonflies—have direct access to their own dedicated garden. This gives children regular opportunities to take their learning outdoors, develop greater independence and enjoy new challenges as they prepare for school.

The garden supports active role play and construction play, allowing children to create their own ideas, work together and solve practical problems. A dedicated digging area provides opportunities to explore soil, search for natural treasures and investigate the world beneath their feet.

A large outdoor chalkboard encourages drawing, early writing and mark-making. Children can express their ideas, practise letter and number shapes or collaborate on large-scale pictures and designs.

The sandpit and water-tray area supports sensory exploration, early science and mathematical thinking. As children scoop, pour, fill and empty, they begin to investigate ideas such as volume, capacity, texture and movement while developing their communication and problem-solving skills.

Our water wall extends this learning through hands-on experiments with pouring, direction, movement and flow. Children can test their ideas, observe what happens and make changes as they play.

The garden’s bug and insect hotel encourages children to observe small creatures at close range. It helps them learn about habitats and the natural world while developing curiosity, patience and respect for living things.

Growing and Learning

Our ever-changing allotment gives Pre-School children the opportunity to grow and care for a variety of herbs, fruit and vegetables.

Children can take part throughout the growing process—from preparing the soil and planting seeds to watering, observing and harvesting. This helps them understand life cycles, seasonal change, responsibility and where their food comes from.

The produce they grow can inspire tasting experiences, healthy snacks and simple cooking activities. Children can discover new flavours and enjoy recipes made using ingredients they have helped to nurture.

We find that children are often more willing to taste unfamiliar foods when they have been involved in growing and caring for them. These experiences encourage positive conversations about healthy eating and help children understand the journey food takes from seed to plate.

Through gardening, exploration and play, the Pre-School garden connects physical development, early science, mathematics, communication, creativity and healthy living in a meaningful and enjoyable way.

Nursery Garden

Children have daily opportunities to visit and explore our spacious Nursery Garden. This safe and secure natural environment provides endless possibilities for investigation, discovery, energetic play and imagination.

The garden offers plenty of space for physical activity and age-appropriate challenges. Children can climb and balance on natural logs, developing their strength, coordination, confidence and awareness of what their bodies can do.

Discovering Nature

The Nursery Garden gives children wonderful opportunities to observe wildlife and investigate the changing natural environment.

Magnifying lenses are available for bug hunts, allowing children to look closely at insects and other minibeasts. Older children can use non-fiction books to identify what they have found and discover more about different creatures, their habitats and their life cycles.

Nesting boxes and bird feeders encourage a variety of birds into the garden, providing opportunities for children to observe their colours, behaviour and movements. Our hedgehog house also inspires curiosity as we look for signs that a hedgehog may be visiting or hibernating.

These real-life discoveries encourage children to ask questions, share ideas and develop respect for living things.

Mud, Water and Construction Play

Two separate mud kitchens give children plenty of space to mix, scoop, pour and rustle up their own imaginative creations. Mud play encourages creativity, communication and cooperation while offering a rich sensory experience.

The construction area allows children to plan, build and solve problems on a larger scale. Working individually or with friends, they can explore different materials, test their ideas and adapt their creations.

Our water wall introduces early scientific and mathematical concepts such as movement, direction, flow, capacity and cause and effect. Children can pour water through different channels and containers, observe what happens and experiment with their own ideas.

Imagination and Small World Play

Our natural tree area includes Dinosaur Land, a fairy garden and Fairy World. These inviting spaces bring children’s imaginations to life through storytelling and small-world play.

Children can create characters, develop their own stories and share ideas with friends. As they play together, they build language, confidence and important personal and social skills such as cooperation, negotiation and turn-taking.

Music and Early Mathematics

The outdoor music area and music wall include natural percussion instruments that allow children to explore sound, pattern and rhythm.

Children can experiment with different ways of making sounds, play alongside their friends and create their own music. These experiences support listening, coordination, creativity and self-expression.

A dedicated number wall introduces early mathematical ideas through active outdoor play. Children can recognise numbers, count, match and explore simple number concepts within a meaningful and engaging environment.

Learning in the Natural World

Whether children are climbing logs, searching for minibeasts, making music or creating adventures in Dinosaur Land and Fairy World, the Nursery Garden offers something new to discover every day.

It is a place where children can follow their curiosity, test their ideas and learn directly from the world around them—all within a carefully planned, safe and secure environment.

Our Nursery Animals

Animals are an important part of life at Inn Farm and make our countryside setting especially memorable for the children.

Our nursery animals include two guinea pigs, Bubble and Squeak, and five hens. The hens were hand-reared at the nursery, giving the children the remarkable opportunity to observe the hatching process and watch them grow.

Bubble and Squeak spend time in rotation around the nursery rooms, allowing children of different ages to see them regularly and become familiar with their needs and behaviour.

Our hens live in a large walk-in chicken coop within the main nursery garden. Children can observe them at close range, learn how they live and discover where eggs come from.

Our paddocks are also home to three Shetland ponies—Darcey, Dizzy and Dinky—and our Highland cows, Poppy and Bramble, who stay with us during the summer. The children visit the paddocks regularly and enjoy feeding the animals suitable treats, such as apples and carrots, under the careful supervision of our practitioners.

Learning to Care

Children are encouraged to take an age-appropriate role in caring for our animals. They may help to provide food and fresh water, observe their living spaces and learn what is needed to keep each animal happy, healthy and clean.

These practical experiences help children understand that animals depend on us for their care. They encourage kindness, empathy and patience while developing a sense of responsibility and a lasting interest in animals and the natural world.

Our animals also inspire learning throughout the nursery. Children may talk about what they have observed, share animal-themed stories, create artwork or explore subjects such as habitats, life cycles, growth and the different ways animals move and communicate.

Safe and Gentle Interaction

All experiences with our animals are carefully supervised and suited to the children’s ages and levels of confidence.

Children are shown how to approach and interact with animals calmly, safely and gently. They learn to recognise that animals have their own needs and that their space must always be respected.

Good hygiene is an essential part of every animal encounter. Children are taught to wash their hands thoroughly after touching or helping to care for the animals, reinforcing healthy habits alongside their understanding of responsible animal care.

Through these experiences, children develop confidence, compassion and respect for living things—while creating some very special nursery memories.

Our Growing Areas

Growing is an important part of outdoor learning at Inn Farm. Children across the nursery are given age-appropriate opportunities to plant, water and care for herbs, flowers, fruit and vegetables.

These hands-on experiences allow children to observe the growing process for themselves. They learn that plants need water, light, soil, time and care, while developing patience, responsibility and respect for the natural world.

Growing in Pre-School

Children in our Pre-School rooms help to care for their own dedicated growing area, where they plant a variety of fruit, vegetables and flowers.

They can take part in every stage of the process, including:

• Preparing the soil

• Planting seeds and young plants

• Watering and caring for them

• Observing changes

• Harvesting what they have grown

The growing area changes throughout the year, giving children opportunities to learn about the seasons, weather, life cycles and the different ways plants grow.

Growing in the nursery

Our younger children also enjoy simple and meaningful gardening experiences.

They grow herbs around the mud café, where the leaves, scents and textures can inspire sensory and imaginative play. Children can pick herbs to add to their mud-kitchen creations while beginning to recognise and name different plants.

Vegetables are also grown in the undercover garden. The children help with planting and watering, giving them the satisfaction of watching their plants change and grow over time.

These experiences are carefully adapted so that even our youngest children can become involved, explore with their senses and begin to understand how we care for living things.

From Seed to Plate

Where appropriate, produce grown by the children is used within the nursery, including in supervised baking and cooking activities.

Children may help to wash, prepare, taste or cook ingredients they have grown. This allows them to experience the complete journey from planting a seed to enjoying the finished food.

Growing their own produce helps children understand where food comes from and supports positive conversations about healthy eating. It can also encourage them to become more confident about exploring unfamiliar fruits, vegetables, herbs, flavours and textures.

Learning through Nature

Gardening connects many areas of children’s learning and development. Digging, planting and watering support physical coordination, while counting seeds and comparing plant sizes introduce early mathematical ideas.

Children build their vocabulary as they talk about roots, stems, leaves, flowers and growth. They also begin to investigate simple scientific ideas by observing changes, noticing patterns and discovering what plants need to remain healthy.

Above all, our growing areas give children a sense of pride and achievement. By caring for something over time, they learn that their actions make a difference.