Dicky Birds Day Nursery and Preschool Surbiton, Maple Road

They get to know your kid and provide personalised care. They’re often able to answer questions about the day or latest behaviour and are supportive through phases and transitions. We’ve been impressed with the diverse activities and curriculum. Economies of scale ensure that your kid gets to journey things they might not when at home. The facility is well organised and equipped. We’ve been generally cheerful with the team across the multiple classes our kid has now been through.

The team are very thoughtful and I am fully confident that they are providing excellent care for my kid and broadening their horizons.
In addition, from a very practical standpoint, 3 meals a day and nappies are provided which makes our life as parents much easier during the week. My kid has been at this childcare centre for almost 2 years now, going through the different classes and every single one has been even better than the previous one.

When we joined for our kid the Ofsted reports were ‘Great’, prior to that ‘Outstanding’.
The turnover of team, continuity of team, team levels, team consistency and capacity to focus on the development of your kid just isn’t there. We’re immensely disappointed with this childcare centre, particularly the management who seem to be wholly ineffective and functionally useless.
There’s little attention to the discovering pathway, maturity, shortfalls and needs of an individual kid, yes they can look after your kid but they seem to be unable to meaningfully develop their discovering.
For the higher than local pricing they charge and the onerous terms and conditions they rigidly mandate on parents it just isn’t worth considering as an option.
We would suggest you look to another childcare centre, not the Dicky Birds/Grandir/Kidi Caru group (who have several locations nationally). The childcare centre is poor; recently audited by Ofsted as ‘Requires improvement’ across all measurable areas.

Consistently enthusiastic about discovering and enjoyable all mixed in together.
It’s well run with managers consistently on hand and room leaders consistently keen to talk to parents every day about the day’s activities.
Activities are varied – walks, discovering, science experiments, dancing, yoga etc. A remarkable childcare centre with lovely, attentive team.

We had the most awful case of bottle rejection when we started and she is such a mama’s girl she even cries when daddy picks her up. The team have been so understanding and compassionate, working with me trying all kinds of different bottles and cups, even spoon-feeding her milk to get her the liquids and nutrition she needs. She’s now cheerful and thriving and absolutely loves going to childcare centre. It’s a priceless feeling that my precious little one is getting the best care and enrichment she possibly could under the care of the Flamingo room team. She especially adores all the messy playtime they organise for the class, which is impressive considering it must be no small feat to spotless up after. I certainly would not want to give her that journey at home myself! We also need to be talking about the food, because the cuisine at this place is 5 baby Michelin stars. I know because I’ve tried it myself. My youngest has been with this childcare centre for 7 months since she was 7 months old.

Our older two attended another DB childcare centre, and my middle one attended Maple Road for a few months when we moved. We tried another childcare centre with our youngest because it had slightly longer hours and was in a more convenient location for us. But we missed DB, the quality of care, the lovely team and the ethos so we came back and are so pleased. It’s even better than we remember. The team have been excellent in both rooms so far. My son bounces in every morning and is cheerful when we pick him up. I couldn’t suggest the childcare centre more highly. We adore Dicky Birds.

Regarding development, I think that the practitioners are doing a fabulous job. Our daughter adores the childcare centre and knows the names of a decent number of practitioners she had interacted with and also the names of the kids in her room. We are receiving regular updates on her development. Management-wise, there used to be quite a few issues with the staffing shortages that negatively affected parents in the mornings as we had to wait for team replacements and had been given at short notice. I assume that this had also been putting a high stress load on the practitioners (who had been handling it amazingly well) and consequently kids. However, the situation seems to have improved. On the food note, the meals that they serve for lunch and tea seem varied and healthy, but the breakfast is not nutritious enough (no eggs), at least from what I’ve seen. I will split my review into the kid development and overall childcare centre management categories.

This meant that there were occasions when they had to turn kids away because they just didn’t have the team available to meet the required ratio. However, they seem to be fully staffed now and the new team have been fantastic. The food is also delicious (I’ve tried it!) and my little one frequently has more than one serving. Management can do a better job of communicating team changes, such as giving parents sufficient heads up about team leaving, introducing new joiners etc. But otherwise, the team are excellent and my little one is cheerful there. Dicky Birds Day Childcare centre had gone through a period of team shortage in 2022 with many experienced team leaving.

We’ve had three kids go through two Dicky Birds settings, before, during and after the pandemic years and it has been a consistently exceptional journey for our family, mainly thanks to the adore and care of the talented team who really make it a second home. It’s been transformative for all our kids’s self‑assurance. Our third kid is currently at Maple Road and loves the setting and all the team so much, she toddles in and out of there every day beaming. I live for the photos of the messy playtime (the team are extremely creative and I especially adore that I don’t have to sense guilty about not doing messy playtime at home!), garden time and the trips to the river and cherish the weekly updates on what they are discovering so I can share in the same songs, books and themes at home. Early years is undervalued, but we are so grateful for the Dicky Birds team Hard to overstate how big a part of our lives childcare centre is as working parents with no local family assistance – we’d be lost without Dicky Birds Day Childcare centre.

Our youngest (now almost 2) began his childcare centre journey there at 10 months and we loved it so much that we transferred our eldest when he was nearly 3 after he had had 18 months elsewhere.

Everyone is compassionate and welcoming. They teach the kids in a enjoyable, playful, messy (!), joyful way and they adore them and protect them exactly how you want your kids nurtured when they are away from you. They encourage individuality but also communal respect. They stress fresh air and the outdoors and they give kids the space to be themselves. We adore it.

We cannot say enough great things about the team and the programme at Dicky Birds Maple Road and are cheerful that we chose it. Both of our boys attend Dicky Birds Maple Road and have done so for nearly a year.