Little Beans Tooting Boutique Nursery

Lucky Beans Childcare was founded at Caroline Curtis's home in Balham September in 2016 when she started her childminding business. Since then we have had nothing but happy parents and a record of helping children develop. By operating a forest school ethos within our nurseries we help children develop both their skills and curiosity through the stimulus of learning outdoors. As a positive psychologist Caroline also places a lot of emphasis on children personal and emotional development.

From the outset, Caroline had a clear vision of providing excellent care, positive parenting and using strengths based methods to nurture children and enable them to thrive, gain life-skills and be happy.

Due to the success over the past 6 years and the growing demand from parents for places at Little Beans Balham Childminding, Caroline was able to grow the business. We now have six additional nurseries:

-Little Beans Balham Nursery - Not to be confused with childminding at my home, this is a boutique nursery around the corner I opened to offer a similar type of home from home care in a small setting. It opened in September 2021.

- Little Beans Tooting is a boutique nursery, similar to the childminding setting in Balham offering childcare in Tooting. This was opened in January 2019 and caters for children from the age of 0 to 2 years. - This setting

- Growing Beans Tooting on Mitcham Road is a nursery and preschool catering for children aged 0 to 5 years, which opened it's doors in September 2020.

- Growing Beans Streatham is a nursery, which was opened in September 2018 and caters for children from the age of 0 to 3 years.

- Growing Beans Streatham Preschool opened in January 2023 and cares for children aged 3-5.

- Growing Beans Norbury is a nursery which caters for children from 0 to 3 years, this setting opened in January 2020.

- Growing Beans Norbury Preschool is a preschool which provides care for children aged 3-5 and opened in January 2022.

Each of our settings in Norbury, Streatham and Tooting have dedicated, hard-working staff who are all passionate about creating a home away from home, all our children are thriving and excelling, but most importantly they are all loved and treasured by Caroline and her team.

If this sounds like what you need please don’t hesitate to contact me for a chat or visit our website which has more information about Lucky Beans Childcare, https://www.luckybeanschildcare.com/.

Little Beans Tooting Boutique Nursery

Little Beans Tooting Boutique Nursery has been operating since 2019 and has a very cosy and 'home from home' feel for a small amount of children aged 0-2. As well as large amounts of books and toys and safety-conscious modifications to the small main room, the setting has a garden for the children and access to sleep room in the adjoining Bruce Hall complex and to the main hall there for activities and classes from external providers onsite, including Baby Ballet, Spanish, Tennis and Adventurebox. We also make frequent trips to Tooting Bec Common, Balham Library and Triangle Playground as well as local shops and markets.

We create a My Learning Story folder for each child so you can see the progress your child is making and we hold regular catch-up and development meetings to discuss your child's progress. We create individual family Whatsapp groups so we can keep you up to date with your child's achievements.

We are fully Ofsted registered and a member of the NDNA (National Day Nurseries Association) and all our staff are first aid trained.

Please contact us for any more information or visit our website https://www.luckybeanschildcare.com/ and select 'Little Beans Tooting Boutique Nursery' to read more and download a prospectus.

Here's some of things your little one will be doing at this nursery:

Learning

Circle Time – w use singing and finger rhymes to develop children’s vocabulary

Free Play – with nudging and encouragement, this allows the children to explore their own interests and instincts

Messy play - working with water, cornflower etc discovering textures and shapes

Story Time – by following along with the pictures they begin to grasp the fun of written words

Spanish teacher - this gives the children a different perspective, even if they're not speaking yet

Phonics lessons - we offer phonics lessons to all children in order to help develop their speaking and pronunciation

Nurturing

Caring For Others – Caroline puts a great emphasis on learning to appreciate other people, their space, wants and needs, through play and example

Gardening – tending to plants helps inculcate a gentle nature

Arts & Crafts And Musical Instruments – by giving children encouragement to develop their artistic side and to have fun and be messy we nurture the soul as well as the mind

Life-skills

Cooking – learning to associate cooking with pleasure early stands children in very good stead later on in terms of their health

Books Everywhere – the love of reading is probably the most valuable life skill a child can have, and it all starts with associating simple books with fun stories

Sport – games in the garden and the park help them learn to cooperate with others

Our greatest strength - our child-carers

The nursery assistants and managers that Caroline has assembled have a huge range of childcare skills and have been trained and developed extensively. They are as committed to caring for your children and you will see that your child will have a lot of attention from a dedicated, caring team.

Food and nutrition

The importance of good nutrition to children can't be overestimated. Quite apart from the fact that it's necessary for healthy physical development a healthy balanced diet gives them the energy and concentration to learn and play well. The food I provide is healthy and nutritious and mostly organic, and I work with you to accommodate any allergies or intolerances your child has. If it would make you feel more comfortable you are of course also welcome to bring your own food for your child when you drop them off in the morning. We have rotating weekly menu’s that change throughout the year.

And how do we manage all this? With our little helpers of course! You can involve young children in cooking in many different ways by letting them help you mix things, measure out ingredients, add herbs and spices and ice cakes, to name but a few. Our first concern is obviously safety so we would never allow children near knives or hot pots and pans.

We am also very aware of allergies and we take great care to work around any allergies that your child has. If it would make you feel more comfortable you are of course also welcome to bring your own food for your child when you drop them off in the morning. 

There is also water available all day of course. If your child is weaning don't worry, we can work with you on this.

Involving you

As mentioned earlier we want you to be as involved as possible. Apart from liaising with you about any health/dietary issues and chatting when you pick up your children there are several others ways we will endeavour to get your input:

See what your little one is doing in their My Learning Story folder - Every child gets a folder with pictures that documents the progress they make and the things they enjoy. Through this you get a good idea of what your child is enjoying and how they are making those daily little breakthroughs. By going through this with me at our catch up sessions (see below) we can work together to reinforce your child’s progress.

Regular catch-up/development meetings - While we would be delighted if you wanted to come and have a quick chat with our staff when picking up your children if you have any particular idea or concern, we will be having regular catch-up meetings every couple of months to review your child's progress, work on their individual development plans together and ensure that you are happy and make sure that we’re all on the same page.

Meet everyone at our parents parties - Your child will be interacting daily with other children we're caring for, so why not come and meet us all? We will hold occasional casual get-togethers so we can all get to know the other important people in our children’s lives .

A Whatsapp group - for each family we have a Whatsapp group for you and me where I can keep you up to date with your little ones triumphs and accomplishments and so you can quickly let us all know anything important for that day you forgot to mention at drop-offs.