Tips for settling into nursery?
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Mine both started before they were a year old so it was harder to prepare them, but when we moved my 3 year old to a school nursery we did the above so it wasn’t a surprise for her and she was fine with the change.
My experience has been the opposite and it really helped for my little ones (also over 2) to see me building a relationship with the people who were going to be looking after them. In our case this was a nanny but some of the same approach might benefit your child such as showing photos of the setting before and regularly after their first visit, talking about the staff who will be caring for your child really warmly and showing your child you have a rapport and "know" the person who you're leaving them with. Ensuring their keyworker can also talk about their favourite things and have some of their favourite activities to do when you leave might help.
Tell him about it, maybe walk past it so he knows what it looks like. Explain that you won’t be there but other people will look after him and he’ll get to play with lots of new toys and do lots of running around and painting etc. Make sure it’s not kind of sprung on him that he’s suddenly there. He’s 2 so old enough to understand all that now. Then get him there and just go. Don’t hang around and make it worse. He probably won’t want you to go, but you leaving is the whole point, so just leave and get that hard bit over with and he’ll be fine!