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Arcadia
A calming environment
When Edinburgh University added its Arcadia Nursery, staff from the Early Childhood program visited Community Playthings together with their architect. The result of their careful planning is a beautiful nursery defined by wood tones, calm colours and plenty of natural light.
We are part of Edinburgh University. We have a diverse group of children who join us here in the nursery from all over the world. Their parents can be students or they could be teaching staff. Our approach here at Arcadia nursery is that we are child lead. We go with whatever the children are interest in and planning for the purpose built nursery we worked very closely with the architect.
The architect listened to all the wonderful ideas that we had. I've been working in childcare for nearly 40 years so there's lots of wish lists that I've made up over the years and every one has come to fruition. She listens all well to everything that really needed in a nursery and we've now got this the fantastic nursery. We use the Community Playthings room planning service, which we found to be really excellent because it made us able to visualise what the rooms would look like. Looking at the different diagrams and books didn't do it justice.
It was really important that we came down to see where all the equipment was made, it was just amazing and that's just why we went with Community Playthings. Our architect came along with us to the visit. So that was really helpful as well, to let her see what our vision was. We feel that the environment plays a huge part and the quality of childcare here in Arcadia.
We love the smell, the aesthetic look of it, the way that it lends itself to the building with all our wood around us, it just has become part of the building and all parents and visitors all comment on how calm the nursery is. I would say that it's well worth spending that initial outlay, which is costly, but it's quality that you receive. I've used Community Playthings at other nurseries, you know we have equipment that we've had had for over 20 years that still looks like brand new so it's well that initial outlay for long term.
The architect listened to all the wonderful ideas that we had. I've been working in childcare for nearly 40 years so there's lots of wish lists that I've made up over the years and every one has come to fruition. She listens all well to everything that really needed in a nursery and we've now got this the fantastic nursery. We use the Community Playthings room planning service, which we found to be really excellent because it made us able to visualise what the rooms would look like. Looking at the different diagrams and books didn't do it justice.
It was really important that we came down to see where all the equipment was made, it was just amazing and that's just why we went with Community Playthings. Our architect came along with us to the visit. So that was really helpful as well, to let her see what our vision was. We feel that the environment plays a huge part and the quality of childcare here in Arcadia.
We love the smell, the aesthetic look of it, the way that it lends itself to the building with all our wood around us, it just has become part of the building and all parents and visitors all comment on how calm the nursery is. I would say that it's well worth spending that initial outlay, which is costly, but it's quality that you receive. I've used Community Playthings at other nurseries, you know we have equipment that we've had had for over 20 years that still looks like brand new so it's well that initial outlay for long term.
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