Summertime Nursery & Preschool
GoodTakes funded hoursBirth to 5Long established
A day nursery in Dorchester for children from birth to 5, open 07:30 to 18:00, 5 days a week. £8.50 an hour, and they take the funded hours. Rated Good by Ofsted in August 2023. Open since 2015, with 35 places.
What it costs
Prices change without notice. Treat these as what to ask about, not a quote.
51 weeks a year.
| Age | Session | Hourly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All ages | £7.00Evening Hours 17:00 - 17:30 £15.00Evening Hours 17:00- 18:00, 1 hrs | £8.50Day time hours |
Before you start
One-off charges to take a place.
- £100.00 Depositrefundable
Extras
Charged on top of the session rate.
- £4.50 a day Voluntary Enrichment Contribution
Where this came from
The outlined line is the one the price was taken from.
Funded hours
We accept the 15 and 30 hours Government entitlement for working parents.
Worth knowing. The funded hours must be spread over the year and not term time only. the hours per week are allocated equally across the days your child attends.
What childcare usually costs in Dorset
This is not this setting's price. It is the median hourly fee across all providers in Dorset from the Department for Education's 2025 provider survey. No national data holds what an individual nursery charges, so ring and ask.
Places, hours and the day
Who they take, when they are open, and what a day there includes.
Where it is
DT1 2ETWhat the inspector found
One grade is one visit. A run of them tells you whether it has been good for years or has only just got there.
Ofsted inspector, 2 August 2023 · read the full report
What it is like to attend
Children enjoy their time at this welcoming, friendly nursery and play happily with their friends. Staff are caring and help children to feel safe and gain a good sense of emotional well-being. Children go happily to staff for a spontaneous hug.
Leaders and staff provide a broad curriculum to motivate children's interest in learning and to help them make good progress from their starting points. Children enjoy playing outdoors and benefit from regular exercise. They pedal their ride-on toys around a marked circuit and learn to control their direction. They like digging in the mud to find 'buried treasure'. Children have fun pretending to be 'sleeping bunnies' and then excitedly 'wake up' and smile as they hop and jump around.
Babies show great delight as they enthusiastically splash their hands and faces in a water play activity. Toddlers start to recognise their name cards and like using these to self-register their attendance. Pre-school children concentrate very well when cutting and sticking. They tell staff they are making a sunshine picture to try and make the rain go away. Children begin to recognise numbers of personal significance, such as their age, and tell a visitor, 'I'm not two, I am four'. Children learn to be kind to each other from a young age. They willingly help staff to put their toys away. Children benefit from the frequent praise staff give them for their achievements, and they develop good self-esteem.
What Ofsted told them to improve
To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should:
- strengthen systems for sharing information with other providers children attend to provide a more consistent approach for their care and learning needs n support staff further to make more use of opportunities to extend children's knowledge and understanding of vocabulary.
- 2 August 2023Good
- 31 January 2018Good
Rated Good or Outstanding at 2 of the last 2 graded inspections.
Still missing for Summertime Nursery & Preschool
- Youngest age taken
No dataset holds any of this. Two parents telling us the same thing puts it on the page for whoever looks next.
What to ask them
Some of this is above, from the setting or from parents, and it can go out of date. The rest is in no dataset anywhere. Either way it is worth ten minutes on the phone.
- Is £8.50 an hour still the rate? What is on top: meals, nappies, late pick-up, and what happens if you are late.
- How do you apply my funded hours? Whether they stretch them over the year, and the minimum days you have to book.
- Is there a place for my child's age? Baby rooms fill first and waiting lists are common.
- Who would my child's key person be? And how long have the staff been there. No dataset holds this and it matters more than anything above.
- Can I visit at a busy time? Mid-morning on a weekday tells you far more than an empty room after hours.
Day nurseries within a couple of miles
This one is first. Tick it and one or two others to see them side by side.