Last Saturday the Pear Tree Day Nursery, North Camp team pitched up at the Hilton London Metropole Hotel for the 13^th National NMT Nursery Awards 2015!

The National NMT Nursery Awards were created to celebrate the hard work that goes on within the early years sector with awards in the following categories;

▪       Nursery Training and Development Award 2015

▪       Individual Nursery Award 2015

▪       Nursery Indoor Learning Environment Award 2015

▪       Nursery Team Award 2015

▪       Nursery Manager Award 2015

▪       Nursery Operations Manager/ Director Award 2015

▪       Nursery Group 2015

▪       Nursery Chef/Cook Award 2015

▪       Green Nursery Award 2015

▪       Nursery Website of the Year Award 2015

▪       Nursery Supplier/Innovator Award 2015

▪       Nursery Outdoor Learning Environment Award 2015

▪       Best Nursery Recruitment Imitative Award 2015

▪       Nursery Nurse/Childcare Worker Award 2015

▪       Nursery Apprentice Award 2015

▪       Nursery Personality 2015

▪       Lifetime Achievement 2015

We, Pear Tree North Camp, had been shortlisted in the Green Nursery category, one of five nurseries nationally chosen for this award.

What Makes A Green Nursery?

Being a green nursery isn’t just about recycling paper and switching lights off, it’s about implementing green activities across everything we do at nursery. This includes encouraging our staff and families to walk to nursery, reducing food waste, composting and growing our own. It also encompasses supporting local food banks, saving water and energy, and reusing, repairing and recycling.

Many of these activities could be carried out without any involvement from the children in our care, but that’s not our ethos at Pear Tree. Instead the team really goes that extra mile with the children’s learning and environmental development. We may grow tomatoes in the summer because it’s fun, and homegrown always taste great, but we’re also educating the children at the same time.

It’s easy to remind children to turn a tap off after washing their hands, but a green nursery goes a step further by explaining the reasons for this and encouraging children to find other ways to save water.

Unlike in some nurseries and preschools where teaching children about the environment is seen as a topic to do for a week before moving onto another subject, our green nursery ethos combines this learning everyday. We may be busy exploring space or enjoying some messy play, but underpinning all of this is our desire to make the smallest impact on the environment, and look after our limited resources.

If this all sounds a bit too serious for a day nursery don’t worry, one of our other key objectives at Pear Tree is to make learning fun! Just because we’re green doesn’t mean we can’t do all the fun, messy and creative activities you would expect a preschooler to be doing!

Did we win?

As you may have guessed or already know, we weren’t crowned Green Nursery 2015 on the night, but are delighted to be in the top five nurseries nationally. As a small local setting it’s so important to see that we’re getting national recognition for all our efforts; and as a nursery owner I am so proud of my amazing team who are the ones that do all the hard work, come up with innovative ideas and put these into practice.

We had a great night at the awards, Scott Miles was presenting the awards, and it was great to meet so many other excellent nurseries. A special well done should go to my fellow nursery owner and friend, Sian Nisbett of Dizzy Ducks who won Nursery Website of the Year!

Here’s the evidence of a fab night in London!