Meet the Team
All the staff at Penguins hold paediatric first aid qualifications. Most are qualified in Childcare but more importantly we can all build a mean train track, sprinkle magic healing dust on a scraped knee and transfer any child from a car to a cot without waking them!
Hayley & Toni
Hayley & Toni are the childminders at Playful Penguins.
We met in Uni many years ago. Fast forward a few years and Toni was working as a supply teacher and trying to find flexible childcare for her then 4 year old Jacob. Hayley was a nanny at the time and about to buy her first house so together we came up with the plan to open Playful Penguins in 2009.
Our own children joined the team in 2012. Around the same time lots of our current children also had siblings which led to us become "extended" childminders, with more children than is typical for most childminders.
We both hold degrees (Toni's is in Primary School Teaching and Hayley's is in Law) and have both completed an Introduction to Childminding Course.
We have also completed all the necessary training including and we both hold Paediatric First aid certificates.
Laura
Laura is registered as our Childminders Assistant and is Level 3 qualified, Laura joined the team in 2012.
Up until 2012 Playful Penguins had only looked after 6 children under the age of 3 years. Due to Toni and Hayley both having children and 40% of our children on roll also having siblings, we decided to expand a little and opened a preschool for children aged 3+ years.
Laura was perfect for this role having been in childcare for over 10 years; she previously worked in a nursery as the Deputy Manager of the Pre School and also sometimes worked as the Manager. Her last setting had 80 children on roll and her pre-school room had 26-30 children each day. She has a Level 3 Diploma in Childcare and Education and holds a full paediatric first aid certificate.
Laura is really interested in cars and regularly goes to motor shows and enjoys watching top gear, she's also a massive animal lover and enjoys watching nature documentaries.
Tassia
Tassia (or Tass) is also registered with Ofsted as our Childminders Assistant and she is the newest member of the team joining in Feb 2022.
Tass has previously worked in a large nursery and welcomes the change to a much smaller setting. She is level 2 qualified and of course, has received safeguarding and first aid training.
She is also doing lots of short courses, such as Makaton training as they become available locally.
Gee is really interested in music, photography, and travelling. She also has a keen interest in drawing and is originally from Spain and teaches the children little bits of Spanish too!
How do we work together?
Due to a weird quirk of being registered as Childminders (rather than a more typical Nursery) we can only have 3 members of staff in ratio with the children at any one time. This means we all get to enjoy one day off a week and Hayley does most of the more in-depth paperwork on a specific paperwork day. What this also means for you as parents is that we also have a "spare" member of staff; so if one of us is away on holiday or off work sick there is always another spare set of hands here to cover - woohoo! We have had to close only once since we opened in 2009, this was because a tummy bug wiped us all out and it just wasn't feasible to open, we even managed to stay open all through Covid!
Also a little strangely for a Childminders setting- the person that lives in the house is Laura! Someone has to live in the house for us to remain registered as childminders but the house is actually owned by Hayley and her Husband Ian (you might see him around, he's a secondary school teacher and also registered as an assistant so he can come in when the children are here and sometimes does odd jobs).