Enriching the children's time with regular trips

We’re so lucky here at The Nest Day Nursery to be surrounded by fantastic parks, shops and attractions and we regularly plan trips out with the children. We love the rich learning opportunities that these trips provide and the children always arrive back at nursery smiling and excited to share their experiences.

Our recent trips include: 

• Visits to the local park - We regularly visit  Queens park, our closest park to the setting. The children love walking down to the park, carefully practicing their road safety whilst doing so before enjoying the different equipment at the park

• Visits to our local library - Brighton Library is a fantastic resource and the children love visiting it. They enjoy walking down together before discovering and choosing different books to bring back to the setting.

• Visits to the local garden centre - Our preschool children have also recently enjoyed a visit to our local garden centre - Dobbies! They loved walking around and looking at all the different plants, searching for insects on the leaves. They then got to chose 2 stories all about bugs and gardening to bring back to nursery! 

• The Local farmers market - We love to visit our local farmers market where the children get to choose which fruit they want before putting them in the basket and handing over the money.  They feel empowered choosing their own purchases and interacting with the staff also helps them practice their communication skills, learn about social roles and start to understand about money.

Benefits of trips outside of the nursery

As well as being great fun for the children, visits outside of the setting are so beneficial for many different reasons. These include: 

• Enhanced Learning and Development: Local outings support cognitive and social development by providing hands-on, real-world experiences that make learning tangible.

• Increased Confidence and Independence: Navigating the local environment helps children build confidence and independence.

• Further development social bonds: being outside of the setting helps the children further develop their friendships and bonds with their peers

• Connection to Community: Children learn about their local area, meet community members (like shopkeepers or librarians), and develop a sense of belonging and citizenship.

• Physical and Mental Health: These outings encourage outdoor activity, which benefits physical health, improves concentration, and allows for managed risk-taking.They get to develop their gross motor skills on the different equipment, pushing their limits in a safe environment

• Environmental Awareness: Regular trips, especially to natural areas, foster an appreciation for the environment and promote ecological understanding. The children love discovering the outdoors, spotting seasonal changes like the different weather, the changing colours of leaves and how nature looks different when the sun is shining

Future visits

As well as walking to local attractions, we are lucky at The Nest to have access to a minibus, kindly lent to us by Burgess Hill School for Girls. This enables us to plan and take children to attractions slightly further away so watch this space for more trips planned in the coming months.