2016 has been a fantastic year for Tops Day Nurseries. With so many wonderful memories made, we would like to share some of our highlights with you.
The year started with Tops Wareham celebrating their 16th Birthday. The nursery opened in Carey Road, Wareham in January 2000, and was the second edition to the Tops Day Nurseries family. The building on Carey Road was originally a shop and home and was completely redesigned by an architect and refitted to suit the needs of young children and our staff.
Our new no-added sugar menus were officially launched in February this year, designed to ensure children have a fully balanced diet throughout the day, and importantly have reduced the sugar intake with the meals and desserts provided. The new menu includes a variety of meals such as chickpea curry, or potato and lentil cakes served with vegetable sticks. There is also one fully vegetarian day per week as recommended by the Children’s Food Trust. To find out more about the low sugar menus, please click here.
Tops Day Nurseries made a pledge earlier this year to become a green company. As part of our commitment to a better environment for ours and our children’s futures, we have joined the Green Positive Environmental Action (PEA) scheme and we are delighted to announce that under our second assessment in March we jumped from one to three peas out of 5! Hadland Care Group, (Tops Day Nurseries Head Office) have amended printer settings, installing timers of their heating equipment, making use of time and light sensors, as well as fitting fuel-saving magnets on all the gas and water mains across the nurseries and care homes.
March also saw us welcome our 17th setting to the family, Tops Havant. On Monday 16th Tops Havant was officially opened by the Mayor of Havant, Councillor Faith Ponsonby. To find out more about the open day, please click here.
Tops Day Nurseries and other nursery settings across the country received shocking announcements detailing the funding levels to
be paid to nurseries for childcare in April. Following this, Tops Day Nurseries launched a petition asking for parents, early year’s providers and local authorities to support them in their cause for the government to review their rates now and not wait for the current consultation to close in 2017, this resulted in a visit from Michael Tomlinson, a local MP. To date, the petition has received almost 40,000 signatures and the current funding situation has been reviewed as a result of an increase next year. This is a positive result and we would like to thank everyone that supported not only us as a nursery but supporting the future of our children. To find out more about our petition, please click here. For more information about Michael Tomlinson’s visit, please click here.
Tops Musgrove, based at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton gained their Good Ofsted status in May. We are delighted to receive this good rating from Ofsted for Tops Musgrove as we move away from the old Ofsted grading standards. The new rating come at an exciting time for Tops Musgrove as we welcomed Abi Mouton as the new Nursery Manager. To read the report, please click here.
On Saturday 11th June, Tops Corfe Mullen took part in the Corfe Mullen Carnival procession and we are very pleased to announce the nursery was awarded a 1st place in their category for having the best float! As the Carnival was held on the Queen’s official birthday, staff, children and parents from the nursery were invited to join the Tops Street Party on the 45ft float dressed in their finest attire. All the staff dressed as members of the Queen’s Guard, the children as members of the royal family and the babies as corgis. 250 union jack gift boxes were made to hand out to children watching the parade, filled with stickers, red, white and blue balloons, as well as a recipe card for a traditional treat from our new no, added sugar menus.
Following the carnival trend, on Sunday 7th August, Tops Poole and Tops Parkstone were awarded first place in the Youth Organisation Float category at the annual Poole Carnival with their Rio Olympics 2016 float. Staff were dressed in true Rio carnival spirit with feather head-dresses and tutus, as well as sportswear and medals made by the children…even Marty Mouse was walking alongside the float in colourful carnival attire.
Tops Winchester was officially rated as ‘Good’ in August this year. This grade meant that all Tops Day Nurseries settings are now rated good or outstanding by Ofsted! Please click here to view the report.
In September we welcomed Tops Lymington to the family. Based in All Saints Church, Lymington, the nursery was initially opened to offer flexible childcare for children aged 18 months to school age. Recently, Tops Lymington has created a brand new baby unit, meaning children from 3 months old can also attend! To find out more about Tops Lymington, please click here. To find out more about the new baby unit, please click here.
With months of hard work, we were also able to gain our 4th green pea in September. Achieving 4 Green peas is part of a wider cultural change. We are on course to reduce our carbon footprint by at least 20% using a wide variety of methods but we need to do a lot more.
Following Tops Winchester’s upgraded Ofsted result in August, Tops Parkstone was awarded an outstanding grade!  Tops Parkstone was the first ever Tops Day Nursery opened by Cheryl Hadland, Managing Director in 1990, after failing to find suitable childcare for her own children. Tops Day Nurseries is one of the only nursery groups that offer flexible booking which allows parents to book their childcare to the nearest 15 minutes. To view the Ofsted report, please click here. The following month in October, Tops Bournemouth was also inspected by Ofsted and received an outstanding grade! Please click here to view the report.
With the launch of the low sugar, menu’s capturing the media’s attention, and Tops Day Nurseries having featured in a number of programs and publications; we were very excited to be contacted by the Novelli Academy, to say our new menus intrigued Michelin-starred celebrity chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli. Jean-Christophe visited Tops Boscombe in October to lead a cooking workshop with the Tops Day Nurseries cooks. To find out more about the evening’s events, please click here.
Tops Day Nurseries were also contacted by Children In Need to ask Tops Bournemouth, based at Royal Bournemouth Hospital to represent the town in its newly launched Spotacular campaign. To find out more about this and to view the images from the photo shoot, please click here. Following the photo shoot, Tops Day Nurseries were then asked to work in partnership with Children In Need, raising money for the wonderful charity. In total, Tops Day Nurseries raised £1784.11 in donations as well as holding a number of activities at each setting, a figure which we are very proud of!
There has also been a number of exciting new programmes and extra-curricular activities launched this year, with the intention to carry these on in the years forthcoming, such as working alongside the Potty Training Academy, launching the new tooth brushing programme, introducing meditation, yoga and boogie mites sessions and much more! Take a look through our recent blog posts for many other activities you can expect from Tops Day Nurseries.
There have been a number of achievements across 2016, and we are looking forward to 2017 for another fantastic year!
