Northern Ireland's largest leading childcare company
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At Sleepy Hollow, we have four main departments within our childcare organisation:
Early Childhood Centres:
We have four registered day nurseries/early childhood centres based in Crumlin, Holywood, Lisburn and Aldergrove.
Our centres offer the very best early education and care that you could find. We have been All Ireland Centre of Excellence accredited twice at our Crumlin branch. We were also the first Curiosity Approach accredited setting in Ireland. We have a very talented and dedicated team of early educators who we are totally in awe of! We have won the top 20 award for Day Nurseries every year since 2016.
Two to three-year-old specialist provision:
We offer four different Eager and Able to Learn programmes being delivered in our Aldergrove, Glengormley/Newtownabbey, Lisburn and Holywood centres.
These projects are part funded by the Pathway Fund (Department of Education) and are open to all children aged 2–3. On top of this, we offer specialist wraparound childcare in several nursery school sites in both Glengormley and Belfast. This provision is open to children attending nursery in which we operate, and children must be aged three to be able to join our full day wraparound service.
Wraparound Childcare / School Age Childcare:
We have 18 different school age wraparound childcare branches. This is where we partner with primary schools to offer a combination of before or after school care, or both. Some schools offer their own breakfast and waiting clubs and we complement these by staying open up to 6pm and over school holidays, and in other branches we offer it all from breakfast right through to 6pm. If any school leadership teams are interested in having this service at your school — which is fully registered and regulated by HSC Trusts — please reach out to us via email at info@sleepyhollowgroup.com.
Administrative support:
Our final division is our admin support to enable all those early years and playwork professionals carry out the most important part of their tasks which is caring for the children! We are lucky that we have a dedicated team of finance and admin support who can help with parents registering for childcare and to help signpost for any financial support which you may be entitled to. This support really means, as we said above, that those management teams working in our branches can focus purely on the day to day running of their site and the welfare of children and staff in their units.
You can reach our admin office by emailing info@sleepyhollowgroup.com or telephoning 028 9433 9031.
Sleepy Hollow follows its own unique pedagogy!
We are playwork passionate, following the playwork principles and being inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach. We have been fortunate to have had three of our teams out at International Study Groups in Reggio Emilia in 2016, 2017 and 2018. The Directors also returned to Reggio Emilia in 2019. While loose parts and natural environments are becoming the norm in early years settings, it is important to understand how this fits your organisation’s pedagogy.
We have had to adapt aspects from both playwork and Reggio Emilia to fit our own needs in Sleepy Hollow, so we have added just a sprinkle from the Curiosity Approach to develop our own unique pedagogy, which we call Sleepy Hollow Inspired. Our brand Sleepy Hollow Inspired is significant to us — it’s our ethos, curriculum, and inspiration! In addition, we have written our own Sleepy Hollow Inspired qualification, which all staff complete during induction. Hence, there is a clear understanding of what our values and pedagogy are when you come to work for Sleepy Hollow.
Through all the adversity with the government and violence in NI - Sleepy Hollow Group has not lost their passion for providing quality care and innovation in childcare to the children of NI. I think Bronagh and Diane and the pillars on which they stand are some of the most inspiring speakers I have listened to and I hope to be this passionate about childcare moving forward
Alanna Gould - feedback on Fairy Dust Teaching Conference
Sleepy Hollow Early Childhood Centre is first class - like a little family, which helped me a lot with going back to work. Lovely staff look after our daughter and I wouldn’t go anywhere else
Christine A
Sleepy Hollow are excellent - not only does my daughter love spending time there after school and during the summer, the staff are also very good to deal with and easy to contact
Carolyn B
I would never go anywhere else for childcare, all three of my children will have been looked after by Sleepy Hollow and the care and commitment they have for each individual child is excellent.
Jayne B
My children go to Sleepy Hollow After Schools in St Therese of Lisieux on the Antrim Road. They love it - the care is excellent and the girls are very play and children focused. There is a really interesting programme during the summer. I can highly recommend.
Orchard Mum
Sleepy Hollow is a fantastic Nursery, the level of care is outstanding. I have 2 children attending Sleepy Hollow full time and they both love it and all the staff are just simply amazing - I cant recommend them enough.
Grace Davidson
My son has attended Sleepy Hollow Crumlin since he was 9 months old. The staff and management are really dedicated. This day nursery is fantastic, my son is now 8 and still enjoys his time in Sleepy Hollow, he has always been so content, happy and well looked after in Sleepy Hollow. Highly recommended!
Carol
I’ve been using this nursery for over almost two years. The Reggio Emilia approach is just amazing, I love being able to look online on my break at work to see what my kids have been up to. The staff always put the needs of the children first, their focus and the drive is always the children in their care.
Emma W
A fantastic nursery with a strong vision, beautiful environment and amazing staff. I am very happy to send my child here
Claire M
The techniques Diane and Bronagh have developed to educate parents and decision makers are fabulous
Susan Tabor - feedback on Fairy Dust Teaching conference
I love how Sleepy Hollow Group let children be children instead of giving them technology to keep them entertained
Stefanie Buley - feedback on Fairy Dust Teaching
'Sleepy Hollow are to be commended for their innovative and continuous desire to lead in the early year sector and to provide children with rich learning experiences as well as high quality care'
