Hello, I'm Chris Wedgbury and I am the Playschool Leader of "Happy Hedgehogs" in Appleby Magna.

Playschool originally started in Appleby in 1973 by Canon Jones and was run by various people throughout the years, I originally took over, having worked 2 to 3 years in other playschools, with a friend Julie Colyer, in September 1989. Before we took over, playschool only opened two days a week. We did a survey and found it warranted opening 5 days a week. We started with just 12 children a morning and built it up to now having 26 children a morning. We now have 50 children on our books.

In 1990 we decided to change the name from "Appleby Magna Playschool" and ran a competition between the children to find a new name, as you can see, it became "Happy Hedgehogs" and we have not looked back since.

In 1992 my friend left for pastures new and now playschool is run by myself and fellow workers, we are not a Committee run playschool. We are all highly trained, I have various childcare certificates and Vanessa has gained her NVQ level 3 in childcare education. We all have up to date First Aid Certificates and Food Hygiene. The names of workers are Lynn O'Grady who has been with me for 9 years, Melanie Mills who has bee with me for 10 years, Trudi Telford for 5 years and Vanessa Fowler for 3 years.

In 1994 we became the first playgroup in North West Leicestershire to be Accredited with the Pre-School Learning Alliance which took 12 months hard work to get. The Lord Mayor of Leicestershire came to Appleby to present us with our Certificate and we featured in many newspapers.