As practitioners and parents/carers we all agree that play is essential and fundamental to a child’s physical, social, emotional and intellectual development. Play is what children do every day, for the young children attending Third Door there is no distinguish between this and learning, although it can be categories such as social, quiet and creative.

All children love to play, and during this time they are provided with many opportunities for learning. I believe it is the most important way in which children learn about the world around them whether it is looking through a picture book – pictures representing objects and words labelling the objects or dressing up and playing in the home corner- using small muscles, recreating their own world, sharing materials and communication with other children.

During my career I have encountered parents that worry that their children are “just playing” and not learning things they need to learn. Whereas I agree structured support, guidance and teaching of young children is vital, we must all remember play is learning and it does guide and support the children’s development.

At Third Door we have designed and intended the daily routine to be rich and meaningful encouraging new experiences and we promote this through a number of methods. For example by providing sufficient time for play – we understand children require time to explore an activity and too many stops and starts will lead to frustration and hinder their imagination from developing and interactions with others to occur. Also we plan and offer the children a selection of play experiences every day as different types of play lead to different kinds of learning experiences, in addition we understand that an activity for one child may result in a different learning experience for another.

As part of our daily routine we have time dedicated to free-flow play activities. This can sound vague, but this time incorporates planned activities, which is available to be viewed weekly on the intranet site. During this time the children have the freedom to select among many different activities, these activities have been planned around the findings from observations and the children’s interests expressed in the week prior. During this time all practitioners at Third Door understand they need to be paying close attention to the children, interacting and encouraging each individual, while offering them guidance but at the same time allowing the child to lead the play. This also presents the practitioners with the chance to complete observations, which will then inform future planning hence forthcoming activities.

Research has shown that children who are exposed to different types of play such as pretend play are usually more jubilant and cooperative; they can be more willing to take turns and share, display greater creativity in their play and can have larger vocabularies than those less involved in play activities.

We ensure we support each child in their play. We understand the importance of play and how much the children are learning. Every day we engage with your child and provide opportunities for them to interact with adults and other children when playing. By building towers, painting, running, singing and dancing we are watching and children’s learning evolve and progress.

Effective learning through play can be achieved not just in a setting such as Third Door but also when spending time with family…

• By providing a wide variety of play experiences and materials which children can try new things, by experimenting, asking questions, get messy at times and exploring and listening
• By focusing on the learning that can occur during play, using play as a method to teach and enhance development
• By providing opportunities to play outdoors as well as indoors
• Allowing time for free play in which children are selecting and leading play, balanced with structured play
• Encourage creativity, curiosity and the child’s longing to want to know more

Our Director loves making homemade popcorn necklaces and bracelets with her children. Adding colour, learning how to thread as well as counting the number of popcorn onthe bracelet incorporate so many different areas. It's important to build on an activity that your child has shown an interest in and adding variations to it.

Let us know what activities you have found worked for you with your little ones at home.

Love

Gemma, Nursery Manager

The nursery practitioners at Third Door understand the importance of family and we work closely with parents to achieve an outstanding parent/carer relationship.  We ensure we listen and respect individual needs and follow the routines of life at home. By providing a mixed-age group environment we promote the relationships similar to that within a family setup.  The children learn to play and communicate appropriately much like brothers and sisters. in fact Third Door child care includes siblings where the parents see the mixed age group as an advantage to building on a great sibling partnership.

Many parents will wonder whether it’s best to leave their babies in a mixed age environment or not.  Mixed age groups are more likened to a natural family environment with older and younger brothers and sisters.

"Babies, who are around older children, like my son is at Third Door, often learn a lot from the older ones and learn through watching how the older children play and communicate. I am from a big family and feel that this is the natural place for my son, as he’s part of a tight-knit family group who meet, play and learn with each other, every day.” Third Door member, Kath Clarke and parent of 7 month old

Research shows one of the greatest ways children learn is from each other rather than adults, so the mixed age child care we provide sets the stage for this type of learning and development.  Studies have also displayed children in small multi age groups often display less competitive behaviour and greater displays of helpfulness. Having gained experience in a variety of settings over the past decade, I have found the dynamics of the relationship between the children at Third Door reflect this research.  The older children understand that you need to be patient with the younger babies whether that is reflected in sharing the resources or why they cry as they become tired.

Another example is that of an 18 month old, who recently had to manage the arrival of a new sibling, the child’s mother commented how gentle and kind hearted he is towards his sister and we too observed the child kissing a younger child  on the forehead as they slept.  This demonstrates the compassionate and caring relationships between the different age groups that Third Door embraces and cultivates.

As experienced nursery practitioners, all of us agree we benefit from observing each child grow and develop over a longer period of time which in turn allows us to form closer, longer term relationships with them.   This in turn allows us to fully understand and plan a vast variety of activities that they all can enjoy and draw on their interests to truly support their development.

"Recently we created a potion lab in the role play area; the 3 year olds loved the story telling pretending to be a good witch, ‘writing’ ingredients for potions and creating spells.  The two year olds enjoyed investigating the water, pouring and mixing the different colours as the one year olds explored the textures of the custard, flour and pasta." Vicky Heggie, Deputy Manager

Our mixed age nursery is a fulfilling and sensitive learning environment that adopts a healthy approach and style towards learning. We achieve this by respecting the learning needs of all the children that attend and thrive at Third Door.

by Gemma Manns, Third Door Nursery Manager

The news agenda has been recently dominated by the announcement that more and more women are leaving their jobs to look after their families, due to the high cost of childcare. But, here at Third Door we are working to break the mould of traditional childcare by offering flexibility to families.

As a result we have recently been shortlisted for two prestigious industry awards. The Nursery World Awards 2011 and O2 Smarta Business Awards both have recognised Third Door as an innovative business. The Smarta Awards are a collection of the UK’s savviest, enterprising, most disruptive small businesses in the UK.  Naturally, we were delighted to be finalists in both these prestigious awards. We set up Third Door last year as we recognised UK work patterns were shifting. As a result, we have been inundated with new membership requests recently as parents look for a solution that will help them juggle work and childcare. So much so, we are currently looking at locations for our next Third Door site…more on that to follow soon!

We've recently been awarded a Good in Ofsted with an Outstanding in the Parent-Carer category. In the meantime wish us luck in getting through the another award we have been shortlisted for: Nursery Management Today ' Best New Business' :-)

In an earlier blog, I talked about the story that led to myself and my business partner launching Third Door. Another frequently asked question is 'Why Third Door?'

In the research for the feasibility of a concept of integrating a flexible workspace with a flexible onsite nursery, we covered the notion of 'Third Space/Place'.

This wiki entry explains quite nicely Third Space/Place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place:

'The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg (1989, 1991) argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

Oldenburg calls one's "first place" the home and those that one lives with. The "second place" is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are "anchors" of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is the intentionality of seeking them out as vital to current societal needs. Oldenburg suggests these hallmarks of a true "third place": free or inexpensive; food and drink, while not essential, are important; highly accessible: proximate for many (walking distance); involve regulars – those who habitually congregate there; welcoming and comfortable; both new friends and old should be found there.'

So there you have it, in simple terms, Third Door is a spin on the term Third Space/Place. A door not to your home or to your work place, a 'third door' to work from and make new connections. It's a great name for the concept of an integrated workhub and daycare nursery isn't it?

We decided on this name as there was alot we could do with branding at launch and in the future. Additionally, the name is not a conventional name for a nursery, which suits us perfectly as we are not a conventional daycare nursery. Our target are working professionals who happen to be parents and who would be happy to call their place of work 'Third Door' rather than Hopping Bunnies or something similar!

www.third-door.com

Third Door has been lucky with the amount of press coverage we have had since we launched the business back in May 2010. We have been covered by BBC Radio London Breakfast show, BBC London News, The Guardian (twice!), FT, Nursery World (three times), won a few awards along the way (Best Start Up, Best Local Business by Lloyds TSB, Smarta 100 2011 winner, and a finalist for a few others). It's been great and really helped us stamp ourselves as the first in the UK to enter the area of merging a workspace for the self-employed/home workers with a flexible onsite nursery.

The concept of Third Door is such a brilliant simple idea that has left many people asking why it it hasn't been done before.  However, more importantly, I believe the story behind Third Door has helped us gain much of this press coverage. It is a lovely story and I would recommend that everyone starting their own brand or company also pulls together the story behind their business. People are always interested in stories and we have used our story countless times. It is one that I will never tire of telling as the story has led to me launching and working passionately on Third Door and also as a result I am lucky enough to take both my children with me to work everyday!

When my daughter was 5 months old and I was halfway through my maternity leave, I realised that I didn't want to go back to my corporate job (Global Brand Research Manager), which as wonderful as the company I was working for is, I just didn't want to do any global travelling or commute full-stop.
I had always harboured ambition to set up my own business so I decided to get together with a like minded friend and brainstorm as many ideas as we could. So with our daughters in tow we started our brainstorming session. However, what we didn't expect was how difficult it was to get into the flow of 'brainstorming' whilst tending to the needs of our girls with one of the girls constantly needing some kind of attention, be it nappy change, feeding, entertaining, holding etc.

So in a bid to get them to sleep we went to the local Starbuck's and then the local park, both of which made no difference. I remember clearly feeling very frustrated and saying to my friend how great it would be to leave the girls somewhere where they could be looked after whilst we worked nearby!

Being a researcher, I started looking into this idea and found a similar idea based in the States. Additionally a number of insights were revealed, some new, some old; many new mums are to reluctant to return back to work as they are nervous about placing their child in childcare. More dads want to spend more time with their child during the workday instead of just mornings, evenings and weekends. More and more people are able to work from home with the advent of mobile technology; all one needs is internet access, a laptop and mobile phone and they can work from anywhere in the world.

However, with this comes the added problem of loneliness, missing the office buzz and having the distraction of household chores. Third Door would solve many of these problems and through creating a membership space we would enable networking, collaboration and a sense of community.  One of the most important insights was lack of flexibility in the traditional nursery model and at Third Door, members would be able to pick the sessions they needed as long as they give enough notice.

My husband and co-founder, was studying for his MBA (self-funded) at the same time and was just finalising his dissertation project. I suggested he focus on this idea I had been researching. He thought it was a no-brainer as he was feeling all the pain points I had already identified of working from home around a small child. Yusuf worked hard on a feasibility plan of our concept. We were thrilled when he received a distinction for it. At around the same time, my employers had announced that they were making redundancies so I decided to take voluntary redundancy (despite just finding out we were expecting baby no.2).

The next big step was to get funding for our project. We worked hard to turn the feasibility study into a fully functional business plan with all the right numbers for the bank, only to be told a big 'NO' by the bank! We were informed that they could not compare our business against anything similar so they didn't want to take the risk (at around this moment of time, the recession had just been officially announced, hence the reluctance by the bank).

Obviously we were gutted but rather than give up so early in the process, we decided to pool together all our savings. We remortgaged our home and sold some equity to friends and family. We then went ahead with logo design, finding premises, strongly negotiating everything so we could save money. I worked right up to the night our son was born - I had a week's rest before I was back working towards the launch. We decided not to give up and to presevere as we totally believe in Third Door and we knew we would end up being grumpy old people if someone else ended up doing it instead of us! That's enough to get the fire going, new baby or not!

We launched the business when our son was 6 months old and it's been quite a journey to date. The business model has evolved with time, but we are still true to our vision of excellent customer service and helping make the lives of working parents that little bit easier! Our long-term plan is to have a Third Door in every urban town in the UK and we would love to meet any interested parties along the way who help us realise our vision and be part of the journey.

I'd love to hear you comments and if you also have a story to tell, we'd love to have you as a guest speaker at a Third Door event.