Ark in the Park Day Nursery, established in 2001, is a family run business. The Nursery is housed in a beautiful large period property overlooking Forde Park, a stone’s throw from Decoy Country Park, in the pretty market town of Newton Abbot.
We have five large and bright rooms to accommodate the children, each with a different age bracket.
The nursery’s superb situation, just 7 miles from Torquay and 17 miles from Exeter, makes it accessible to families not just living and working in Newton Abbot.
The ark boasts unrivalled outdoor space for all children to explore on a daily basis.
We are part way through building a large wooden deck extension from the rear of the building, accessible from our ground floor big baby room and via a back door from our reception area that leads the children straight to the deck area without needing to walk on the nursery drive way.
The deck, when complete, will feature an undercover area for all weather play, a large outdoor play area with hand washing facilities and den areas. A ramp makes the building accessible for pushchairs and wheel chairs.
Beyond the deck we have a huge play area with astro turf and a large tarmac race track for burning some energy on scooters and trikes. A young baby area is separated from the chaos of the rest of the garden to avoid accidents with small vehicles!
The garden is utilised all year round and we often spend most of the day outside in the summer months. Children are expected to get wet and dirty and therefore we do ask that plenty of spare clothes are left in their bag and appropriate outdoor weather gear for wet, cold days and sun hats and suncream for summer days.
A beautiful oak tree shades us in the summer months and we also use large gazebos for extra shade from the sun. With plenty of water activities and the odd water pistol session we are good at keeping cool!
Prioritising childrens health and nutrition…
Our chef, Selina, has been with us for 15 years, she is very experienced in childrens health and nutrition and sends out delicious home-made meals every day for lunch. Selina also caters for all allergies, vegetarians and vegans.
We offer breakfast, lunch, morning and afternoon fresh fruit snack and picnic style tea at 4pm. Water and milk are available for the children to drink throughout the day as required. We are a nut free setting and we ask that parents do not bring food in from home, this ensures less risk of a child with an allergy coming into contact with any food they cannot have.
