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Offering up to 30 hours of funding for 2, 3 and 4 year olds. Please get in touch to find out about our different options.

Outstanding Nursery School in London

Nursery School, West London

Special Person

Each child is assigned a special person and that teacher is responsible for their learning and development. Your child’s special person will build a strong relationship with them and get to know their likes, dislikes, wants and needs. They will feed this knowledge into our planning and ensure your child is getting the best out of nursery. 

The special person’s role is to also keep in close communication with the parents and they do this by regularly updating your child’s online learning journal with photos and videos, meeting with parents to update them on the child’s progress and writing any relevant reports for their stage and age. Our special people become friends to the children and parents and these relationships support us to offer a bespoke service for all involved.

Special Person

Each child is assigned a special person and that teacher is responsible for their learning and development. Your child’s special person will build a strong relationship with them and get to know their likes, dislikes, wants and needs. They will feed this knowledge into our planning and ensure your child is getting the best out of nursery. 

The special person’s role is to also keep in close communication with the parents and they do this by regularly updating your child’s online learning journal with photos and videos, meeting with parents to update them on the child’s progress and writing any relevant reports for their stage and age. Our special people become friends to the children and parents and these relationships support us to offer a bespoke service for all involved.

Staffing & Curriculum

The Willow Tree is run by a small team of very friendly, experienced and enthusiastic staff who are committed to treating all children as individuals with differing needs and interests. 

Every day the children have the opportunity to take part in a mixture of child initiated play and more focussed adult led activities, often based on themes that the children have thought of themselves.

The teachers ask the children for their contributions to the planning and ensure that each child’s voice is heard. In addition, there are regular visits from our lovely Diddi Dance teacher.

Our Staff

Our Environment

Wow factors

Here at The Willow Tree, we believe every child is unique. Our philosophy is that children learn through play, and when they are playing, are learning at their highest level. Our playful approach builds on the children’s interests and responds to their ideas, assisting them in becoming confident and strong and independent individuals. We build on children’s naturally inquisitive minds, giving them support and knowledge to question, explore and seek challenges. Our children transition through their Willow Tree journey in our vestry hall, a bright and cosy space full of opportunities and experiences, tailored to all ages and stages. 

Upon joining our nursery, each child is assigned a ‘special person’. Our special people support our children and their families throughout their time at The Willow Tree. A child’s special person works closely with them to identify how they learn, their likes and interests, and areas they may need a little support with. They are also someone that your child can rely on and relate to, and who will make them feel safe, comforted and cared for, when you wave goodbye. 

During your child’s first year at the nursery school as a ‘Little Willow’, we focus on the three prime areas of learning. These are ‘Personal, Social and Emotional Development’, ‘Communication and Language’ and ‘Physical Development’. We support the children to make friends, to explore and express their thoughts and feelings in a healthy way, and to develop the skills they need for the future. When the children begin their preschool year as ‘Big Willows’, we build on their confidence accumulated in the Little Willows, focussing on and strengthening the prime areas, and developing the specific areas of learning. The specific areas are ‘Mathematics’, ‘Literacy’, ‘Expressive Arts and Design’ and ‘Understanding the World’. As children will spend the best part of their childhood enhancing these skills at school, our approach is to incorporate the use of letters and numbers through play, so the children are gaining key skills in a relaxed way, at their own pace.

The children complete their journey at The Willow Tree and leave us confident, independent, fully equipped and ready for school, and eager to learn. We see this through their positive school experiences and hear their success stories when they come back to visit us at our leavers’ tea.

We are extremely lucky to have our very own, recently renovated over the summer of 2022, outside space. This is an extremely rare find in London and the children and staff love exploring their large outdoor classroom.

Our must-see garden backs onto Wendell Park which adds a village-nursery feel, making you forget that you are in a city! 

All of our activities and resources offer the children a one-of-a-kind learning experience and we try to spend as much time as we can outside, supported by our ‘all weather’ policy. 

Play takes place indoors and outdoors, and it is in these different environments that children explore and discover their immediate world. It is impossible to capture our outdoor environment in photos. It really is a unique, must-see space.

We have regular visitors to the nursery. These include the London Fire Brigade from the Acton depot, dentists from Ravenscourt Dental Practice and our lovely Diddi Dance teacher.

The firefighters and dentists pop by to coincide with our ‘oral health’ and ‘people who help us’ themes and our lovely Diddi Dance teacher visits us regularly to teach us different dance styles. We also take part in a yearly project where we incubate and hatch duckling eggs! 

We hold lots of different events throughout the year including a sports day in Wendell Park, our extra special Christmas play, a graduation ceremony for our leavers in July and a leavers’ tea in the autumn term.

We pride ourselves on our partnership with parents and we encourage you to be as involved as you like. We offer regular stay and plays, parent teacher meetings and even ask parents to sign up to our healthy baking and reading rotas!

Partnership with parents

We believe that children benefit most from early years education and care when the setting and parents work in partnership. Parents are encouraged be as involved as they wish and are invited to join us at the nursery school to read stories, play, bake, and take part in other activities with the children. Parents and children also enjoy baking healthy snacks at home which are then brought to school and shared with all of the children at snack time.

Parents’ evenings are held termly, with parents signing up for a fifteen minute appointment with their child’s special person. In addition to this, regular summaries are completed by staff for every child, summarising their learning and development.

Tapestry

We use tapestry which is an online learning journal where staff record observations of the children. Parents are actively encouraged to regularly check tapestry and to leave comments and even post their own observations!

Transition to school

Our children move on to the reception classes of a mixture of local state and private schools when leaving the nursery. These include Wendell Park, The Good Shepherd, Greenside and Ravenscourt Prep. We use a range of strategies to ensure that the transition from nursery to school is as smooth as possible for children and their parents.

Additional Learning Needs

Some children require support due to additional learning needs and we do this by tailoring our approach to the individual child. We appreciate that every child is unique and our training, expertise and understanding ensure staff provide the correct level of support, enabling all children to access the whole curriculum. 

We have a range of techniques and tools to support children with additional learning needs and we work closely with relevant professionals to ensure each child achieves their best possible outcomes. We set achievable, reachable targets and work with parents enabling children to meet these with the provision we have put in place.

Testimonials