Play-A-Way Nursery

Day nursery - Pre School - Holiday club

Delivering exceptional childcare in Gillingham, Kent for more than 20 years.

At Play A Way, we’ve been providing personable, affordable and always professional day care in Gillingham for more than two decades from our Christmas Street and Vicarage Road centres.

Play-a-Way Day nursery is our third setting opened doors for children in May 2022. The nursery is conveniently located in a residential area at 37 Stuart Road. This centre is operating from the same premises Strawberry Fields Day Nursery operated for many years.

Play-a-Way provides a friendly, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone. We offer a wide range of activities, encouraging children’s free choice of resources, that accommodate all areas of development.

Our trained, certified staff provide care, play and learning to children from 3 months to 5 years, which gives your little one the right start.

We offer a variety of services, including our day care nursery, breakfast club, school drop-offs, school collection, after-school clubs, and holiday clubs.

Our Vision

Our Vision is to be outstanding in every sense.

We want our nurseries to excel in enabling children to achieve. We intend to provide every child and family attending our nurseries with a high quality experience of care, education and fun.

Our Aims

We strive to enable children to;

  • Develop and appreciate their own personality and abilities
  • Become highly motivated lifelong learners
  • Think creatively to solve problems and achieve in our modern world
  • Have high self-esteem – respecting themselves, others and the environment
  • Be able to work independently and also together
  • To make progress in the prime and specific areas of the EYFS
  • Develop an enquiring mind and a spirit of curiousity
  • To be ready for their next stage in learning

Mission

Playaway believe that each child will succeed through experiencing quality in:

  • A safe, secure, happy and stimulating environment
  • A broad, balanced and challenging curriculum
  • Strong key relationships
  • Effective and innovative teaching
  • A well planned provision to ignite and consolidate learning
  • Clear and consistent boundaries
  • Rich, varied and engaging resources
  • An investigative and hands on approach to learning
  • An ethos of support, challenge and encouragement to succeed
  • The opportunity to be independent, take risks, and have a voice.
  • Learning partnerships between the school, home and the community

We demonstrate our commitment to working as a learning community by:

  • Being self reflective
  • Striving for continuous improvement in all we do
  • Working collaboratively towards common goals
  • Investing in and training our staff

Why us?

At play a way we adopt the philosophy that children learn through play.

We understand each child is unique and create a variety of opportunities for them to learn. We monitor each child’s development regularly through keyperson approach. Each child is assigned to a keyworker who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing and development of a small group of children. The system allows the key worker to understand your child’s individual needs , build a special relationship with them and build a sense of security. They key person observes development and learning of your child and plans the next steps which are stage appropriate and challenging.

We have continued to improve ourselves, our premises, our provision and our knowledge. We believe our ability to reflect and improve is vital to achieving our aims. Our staff are well trained and qualified. All our staff are either qualified NVQ in Level 3 in Childcare or working towards NVQ Level 3 qualification. Two members of our staff hold BA Hons degree in Childcare and another two members have B A hours degree in other areas. All our staff are Paediatric first aid trained. We are delighted that we have been able to create a enjoyable environment for our staff many of our staff have been with us for more than 10 years.

As a family run nursery we are very flexible and do our best to accommodate parents varying requirements. Our fees are very competitive in the area and further we don’t charge any registration fees.