Sunflower Daycare
GoodTakes funded hours★ 5.0 on GoogleBirth to 8+Open a few years
A day nursery in Castleford for babies from 6 months up to school age, open 07:30 to 18:00, 5 days a week. They take the funded hours. They do not publish prices, so ask. Rated Good by Ofsted in September 2023. Open since 2022, with 56 places.
What it costs
Prices change without notice. Treat these as what to ask about, not a quote.
Funded hours
15 hours of free childcare per week for eligible 2 year olds; 15 hours for all 3 and 4 year olds; 30 hours for working parents of 3 and 4 year olds.
Worth knowing. Term time only for the funded hours; eligibility criteria apply for 2-year-old funding and 30 hours.
What childcare usually costs in Wakefield
This is not this setting's price. It is the median hourly fee across all providers in Wakefield 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
WF10 5JTWhat 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.
- 6 March 2024 — Concern: actions taken what Ofsted published
Ofsted inspector, 25 September 2023 · read the full report
What it is like to attend
Children have fun and enjoy their time spent at this nursery. Babies are cherished and nurtured by kind and caring staff. They receive plenty of reassuring cuddles to build their emotional resilience. Older children are provided with genuine praise and lots of verbal encouragement. Staff have high expectations of children's behaviour and, as a result, children respond well and are confident and selfassured, which helps them to feel safe and secure.
Children show a wonderful can-do attitude, and they repeatedly try until they succeed. For instance, as they build a bridge to walk across, children slowly add more bricks to make it more secure. Staff praise children for their efforts. They introduce children to skills that support their independence. For example, babies start to use spoons at lunchtime, with effective support from staff. Older children serve themselves at mealtimes, deciding how much they want, and talk about the foods they like and do not like. Children tidy away after eating and look after their toys. Children are happy and settled, and they are thriving emotionally and developmentally.
The newly implemented curriculum is already well established and can be clearly seen in the interactions of staff and children. For example, staff support children's pre-writing skills by providing activities, such as cutting dough with scissors. They practise their pincer grip as they pick up tiny pom-poms with tweezers. All children are making good progress in their learning and development.
What Ofsted told them to improve
To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should:
- strengthen staff's understanding of the learning intention for planned activities, to enable them to shape activities more precisely to the learning needs of children n provide and extend opportunities to promote children's wider mathematical thinking in order to raise their achievements to an even higher level.
- 25 September 2023Good
- 13 January 2023Needs improvement
Rated Good or Outstanding at 1 of the last 2 graded inspections.
Still missing for Sunflower Daycare
- What it costs
- Nappies
- Waiting list
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.
- What does it cost, all in? 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.
- Do you have a place for a child of my age now? 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.