Keep Guard Day Nursery

At Keep Guard Day Nursery, we understand the importance of supporting children to grow and develop into happy, healthy, and successful individuals. With over 45 years of experience working as a qualified Nursery Nurse, I, Lynn Carmichael, opened the nursery in 1996 and gained a BA in Nursery Management in 2008. Our core values are centred around the idea of "Keep Guard, Keep Safe, Keep Playing", reflecting our commitment to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children through a safe, stimulating, and child-centred environment.

Our Approach to Learning

At Keep Guard Day Nursery, we believe that play is the major learning process through which children extend and acquire new knowledge. From the moment of birth, children use play to make sense of the world, establishing through play a pattern for learning that they will continually return to throughout their adult life when encountering the new and unfamiliar. Through play, children deepen their understanding, practice familiar skills, and learn new ones. They develop attitudes that will help them to learn and that will encourage them to be competent members of the wider community and develop as an individual and as a whole person.

Our Learning Environments

Our purpose-built nursery is set in a truly unique setting of a castle with 12 purposefully designed playrooms and two external spaces to explore as part of their learning adventure. Our settings provide a safe, secure, and stimulating environment for children aged from 6 weeks to 5 years of age from 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, 49 weeks a year. We are delighted to offer FREE PLACES for some 2-year-olds and all 3- and 4-year-olds accessing the 15 or 30 hours of Free and Flexible Extended Entitlement (FFEE) within our Nursery and Pre-School.

Parental Involvement

We believe that in order for children to receive quality care and early learning that suits their individual needs, parents and staff need to work together in close partnership. The two-way sharing of information is key to this, and this relationship needs to be built on mutual trust and understanding. We value and appreciate your parental observations, photographs, and videos as they really do support your child's learning journey and encourage you to send them in as often as you can. During your child's learning journeys with us at Keep Guard Day Nursery, they will be offered an Integrated 2-Year-Old review, this is where we as partners work with a Health Visitor and parent/carers to ensure your child is on track to reach all their learning milestones for their age as well at their height and weight.

Key Person

At Keep Guard Day Nursery, every child is allocated a Key Person who will become your main point of contact within the setting. Your Key Person will help your child to become settled, happy, and safe and will be responsible for your child's care, development, and learning. The Key Person for your child will take careful notes of your child's progress and regularly observe your child exploring different areas of learning. They will share this information with you through a starting point observation, half-termly updates and through summative reports, offering you ideas to support your child's learning at home.

Five to Thrive

At Keep Guard Day Nursery, we are working alongside Bedford Borough Council to embed Five to Thrive, which are the building blocks for a healthy brain. Five to Thrive was developed by Kate Cairn s Associates and it promotes positive parenting skills to help understand the things you do everyday to help your child's growing brain. Five to Thrive complements our established practice ensuring babies and young children are offered a wide range of activities and given opportunities to develop strong relationships with their Key Person to ensure they are RESPONDED to, CUDDLED when needed, enjoy.

Contact Us

We look forward to welcoming you and your family to Keep Guard Day Nursery.