Acorns
3 months to 2 years
- Places
- 12
- Ratio
- 1 adult to 3
- Room lead
- Sioned
- Where
- Ground floor
- MonFull
- Tue1
- WedFull
- Thu2
- Fri2
Ground floor, own garden door and sleep room.
Book a visit to Acorns- 3 months to school
- 7:30am to 6pm
- 30-hours offer
- Forest school
Three rooms, a key person, a cook, a garden and a wood.
A 48-place day nursery in the green-doored house on Merthyr Road since 2011. Babies in Acorns, twos in Saplings, pre-schoolers in Oaks, each with a named adult who knows your child; every meal cooked downstairs; outside every day; and the 30-hours offer claimed for you. Fees are on the website.
- A full day £68, £64 or £60 by room; a funded day £8
- Registered with Care Inspectorate Wales for 48
- 4.9 from 168 parents
A key person for every childYour child is one of three for a named adult in Acorns, one of four in Saplings and one of eight in Oaks. The key person does the settling sessions, the daily diary and the parents' evening, and is the one you ring.
Fees on the websiteA full day is £68 in Acorns, £64 in Saplings and £60 in Oaks, with breakfast, lunch, tea, snacks, nappies and wipes in the price. Childcare is VAT-exempt and there is nothing added. The calculator on the fees page shows the week and the month.
The 30-hours offer, claimed for youThree- and four-year-olds of working parents get thirty funded hours a week for forty-eight weeks under the Welsh Government offer. We are a registered provider; a funded day costs £8 for meals and consumables.
A cook, a garden, a woodMaureen cooks every meal in the kitchen downstairs from a four-week menu. The garden has a mud kitchen, a willow den and a tap. The Oaks go to Forest Farm in the minibus on Tuesdays and Thursdays, whatever the weather.
The rooms
Acorns, Saplings, Oaks: the places left, day by day.
Saplings
2 to 3 years
- Places
- 12
- Ratio
- 1 adult to 4
- Room lead
- Carys
- Where
- Across the hall
- Mon1
- TueFull
- Wed1
- Thu3
- Fri2
Across the hall; quiet room for sleeps.
Book a visit to Saplings
Oaks
3 years to school
- Places
- 24
- Ratio
- 1 adult to 8
- Room lead
- Dafydd
- Where
- Upstairs
- Mon4
- Tue3
- Wed5
- Thu6
- Fri5
Upstairs, the two front rooms; forest school Tuesday and Thursday.
Book a visit to OaksUpdated every Friday afternoon from the register. A place is for the same days every week; a room showing two places might have a Monday in one and a full week in the other, so ring about your days. The waiting list is free and kept in date order, siblings first.
Nursery life
Six things to know, each on its own page.
01
The three rooms
Three rooms by age in a converted Edwardian house: Acorns for twelve babies on the ground floor by the garden, Saplings for twelve twos across the hall, Oaks for twenty-four pre-schoolers upstairs. Each has its own staff, its own toilets or changing, and places left updated on this page every Friday.
A full day is £68 in Acorns, £64 in Saplings, £60 in Oaks; a half day £40, £38 and £36.
02
The day
The same shape every day, so children know what comes next: breakfast for the early ones, group time at nine, outside by ten whatever the weather, lunch at 11:30, sleep or quiet time after it, a cooked tea at 4:30 and stories until the last parent arrives. The full routine for each room is on the day page.
A full day is 7:30am to 6pm with every meal included: £68 in Acorns, £64 in Saplings, £60 in Oaks.
03
Food, cooked here
Every meal is cooked in the kitchen downstairs by Maureen, who has been here since 2013, from a four-week menu written to the Welsh Government food and nutrition guidance: a main and a pudding at lunch, a cooked tea at 4:30, fruit and vegetables at snack, water and milk to drink. Allergies, faiths and weaning plans are cooked for from the same menu.
All meals are included in the day fee.
04
The garden and forest school
Every child goes outside every day in the nursery's waterproofs and wellies: a long garden behind the house with a mud kitchen, a willow den, a digging patch, a tap and a covered area for the rain. The Oaks go to Forest Farm nature reserve in the minibus twice a week for forest school with Dafydd, a Level 3 forest school leader.
Forest school, the minibus, the waterproofs and the wellies are all included in the Oaks day fee of £60.
05
Funding and the 30-hours offer
Three- and four-year-olds of working parents get thirty hours a week of funded early education and childcare for forty-eight weeks a year under the Childcare Offer for Wales. We are registered for it, we tell you when your child qualifies, we help with the application, and a funded day here costs £8 for meals and consumables. Tax-Free Childcare takes a further 20% off what is left.
A funded day is £8.
06
Settling in
Every child has three free settling-in sessions before they start, spread over the fortnight before, with their key person: an hour with you in the room, two hours with you nearby, a morning on their own including lunch. There is a home visit for babies if you would like one, and the first week has a daily phone call at the time you ask for.
The three settling sessions are free.
Food
Maureen cooks lunch and tea. The staff eat it too.
Breakfast until 8:30, fruit and vegetables at snack, a cooked lunch with a pudding at 11:30 and a cooked tea at 4:30, all from the kitchen downstairs and a four-week menu written to the Welsh food guidance. No juice, no squash, nothing with nuts in the building. Allergy, intolerance and halal alternatives come from the same menu, so no child has a different plate from their friends.
- This week: lentil soup and crumble on Monday, fish pie on Wednesday, the Oaks' Friday pizza
- Weaning your way, written up on the daily diary; formula provided
- A five-star hygiene rating and the Gold Standard Healthy Snack Award
Outside
The garden every day. Forest Farm twice a week.
A long garden behind the house with a mud kitchen, a willow den, a digging patch and a covered deck for the rain, and waterproofs and wellies in every size so nobody stays in for want of a coat. On Tuesdays and Thursdays the Oaks go to Forest Farm nature reserve in the minibus with Dafydd, a Level 3 forest school leader: dens, tools, the fire once a month, and the names of what grows there.
- Every child outside every day, in all weathers
- Forest school from three; a garden "little wood" session for the twos
- The babies' pram walk along the Taff Trail on fine mornings
How we work
Four things that are true every day.
Three rooms, not one big one
Acorns for babies, Saplings for twos, Oaks for the pre-schoolers, each with its own staff, its own garden door and its own pace. A baby does not need a room of twenty, and a four-year-old does not need to be quiet for one.
The ratios on the wall
One adult to three under-twos, one to four for the twos, one to eight from three. The ratio for each room is on the board by the door with the names of who is in today, and we do not run below it, ever, including at 7:30am and 5:45pm.
Doors at 7:30, doors at 6
Open ten and a half hours a day, fifty-one weeks a year, with breakfast until 8:30 for the early ones and a cooked tea at 4:30 for the late ones. No half-day minimums, no lunch brought from home unless you want to.
Outside every day
Every child goes out every day, in the rain, with the nursery's waterproofs and wellies. Forest school at Forest Farm for the Oaks twice a week; the garden for everyone; the babies' pram walk along the Taff Trail on fine mornings.
- 48places across three rooms, registered with Care Inspectorate Wales
- 14staff, every one DBS-checked and paediatric first-aid trained
- 15years on Merthyr Road, the same owner at the door
- 4.9average rating from parents
Fees and funding
Every pound on the website, and the 30-hours offer worked out for you.
A full day is £68 in Acorns, £64 in Saplings and £60 in Oaks with every meal, nappy and wipe included, and nothing added. Three- and four-year-olds of working parents get thirty funded hours a week for forty-eight weeks under the Childcare Offer for Wales: here a funded day costs £8, so three days in Oaks is £24 a week instead of £180. The calculator shows your days, by the week and by the month.
Parents
What parents say.
Osian started at seven months and screamed the whole first settling session. Sioned did a home visit, learned his song, and by week two he was reaching for her at the door. The daily diary is the best thing: every feed, every sleep, written down, so the evening at home makes sense. He is in Saplings now and talks about Carys as if she were family.
Bethan sat us down with the 30-hours offer and did the application with us on her laptop. Five days in Oaks went from £300 a week to £144, and then Tax-Free Childcare took a chunk off that. Nobody else we visited explained it; two nurseries told us it did not apply to them. Maya comes home muddy on Tuesdays and Thursdays and will not stop talking about the fire.
Potty training in three weeks, because Carys and I did exactly the same thing at nursery and at home. The food is extraordinary for a nursery: Elin asks for Maureen's lentil soup at home and I have had to get the recipe. The place is not cheap, but every pound is on the website and nothing is added, which is more than the chain down the road could say.
The house
The green door on Merthyr Road, by the Plough crossroads.
A double-fronted Edwardian house with the babies and twos downstairs by the garden and the Oaks in the big front rooms upstairs. Drop-off bays outside the gate, buses at the library a minute away, the stations eight minutes on foot. Visits Tuesday to Thursday, forty minutes, children welcome.
- Getting here. Buses 23, 24 and 25 stop at the library a minute away; Whitchurch and Coryton stations are an eight-minute walk.
- Parking and drop-off. Twenty-minute drop-off bays outside the gate from 7:30 to 9:30 and 4 to 6, marked by the council for the nursery and the dentist; please do not stop on the zigzags by the crossing.
- Visits. Tuesday to Thursday, 9:30 to 11am or 2 to 3:30pm, by appointment with Bethan: forty minutes round every room while it is running, the garden, the kitchen and the fees.
Questions parents ask
How much does it cost?
A full day, 7:30am to 6pm with every meal, nappies and wipes, is £68 in Acorns (under two), £64 in Saplings (two to three) and £60 in Oaks (three to school). Half days are £40, £38 and £36. A day covered by the 30-hours offer is £8. Childcare is VAT-exempt and nothing is added; the fees page has the calculator.
Do you have a place?
The places left for each room are on the home page and the rooms page, updated every Friday from the register. Acorns fills first and is usually booked before the baby is born; Oaks nearly always has space. The waiting list is free and kept in date order, siblings first.
What are your hours?
7:30am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, fifty-one weeks a year. We close on bank holidays and from 24 December to 1 January and do not charge for those days. Your own holidays are charged, because the place and the staff are held for you.
Do you take the 30-hours offer?
Yes. We are registered for the Childcare Offer for Wales and for early education funding, we tell you the term your child qualifies, Bethan helps with the application, and the claim goes straight from us to the council. Three funded days a week cost £24; the rest is on the funding page.
Is the food really cooked on site?
Every meal, by Maureen, from a four-week menu: breakfast, two snacks, a cooked lunch with pudding and a cooked tea at 4:30. Allergy, intolerance and halal alternatives come from the same menu, and nothing with nuts enters the building. This week's menu is on the day page.
How do you settle a new child?
Three free settling sessions over the fortnight before the start date with a named key person: an hour with you in the room, two hours with you downstairs, a morning on their own with lunch. More if needed, free. A home visit for babies. A phone call every day of the first week at the time you choose.
Come and see it running. Tuesday to Thursday, forty minutes, bring the child.
Tell us your child's age and the days you are thinking of, and we reply within the working day with a time to walk round every room while it is open, the garden, the kitchen and the fees. No pressure and nothing to sign; the waiting list is free to join afterwards. Or ring Bethan.