Ashby Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy in this warm and welcoming nursery. They are extremely confident and move around their rooms, choosing the toys they want to play with. The younger children develop their physical skills as they climb safely to the top of small climbing equipment. They delight in coming down with support from staff. Babies show strong attachments to the staff. They snuggle close and look at a book about animals. Babies turn the pages and show excitement as they see the animal on the next page and copy the sounds the staff make. This helps them to develop listening and early communication skills.

Children are extremely enthusiastic learners. They are inquisitive and thoroughly enjoy exploring the activities on offer. Children intensely engage and focus for long periods during activities. They delight in leading their play and learning. Children embrace challenges and support each other to solve simple problems. For example, older children negotiate with each other and try out different ideas and resources as they attempt to help the dinosaurs escape from the ice. They scream with delight and excitement as they use tools, such as small screwdrivers, to break the ice. They use warm water to melt the ice and show awe and wonder as out pop the dinosaurs.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• The manager is knowledgeable and knows what she wants the children to learn. She implements an exciting curriculum with her staff. The staff know what leaders intend for children to learn and achieve at the nursery. The education programmes are clearly sequenced.
• Staff help children in their future learning. For example, they promote good communication and language skills. They make eye contact with babies and young children and provide a running commentary to help them learn new words. Staff provide singing sessions and read stories to help widen children's vocabulary. They introduce words, such as melt, frozen and freeze, as the older children talk about the properties of ice.
• Staff working with the older children recognise opportunities to introduce new mathematical skills to children during adult-led activities, such as deciding if the ice is heavy or light. However, staff do not always fully support or extend the older children's mathematical counting skills.
• Staff have high expectations for the children's behaviour. Children behave extremely well and treat staff and each other with respect. They play exceptionally well with each other. This is evident as the older children build towers, which evolves into them building a bridge. They work together and decide how the bridge will work. Children try different types of blocks and are extremely happy as their cars go along the bridge.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents comment that the staff are 'caring and kind' and they have a 'very good bond' with their children. Staff gain a deep understanding of the children's needs and build particularly good relationships with the parents. This results in an impressive, shared learning approach between home and nursery, enabling children to flourish and thrive.
• Staff gather information about the children's previous experiences and interests. They use this information to plan and provide a wide array of rich, varied play opportunities. For example, some children do not have a garden at home, so staff ensure that outdoor play is a regular feature of the daily experiences offered. Furthermore, they take the children to their forest school area, where they can experience more outside play. For example, climbing trees and building dens.
• Staff provide children with a range of opportunities to develop their self-care skills and independence, making them less reliant on adults. Younger children know the routine for washing and drying their hands before lunch. Older children know why they need to clean their teeth and, at snack time, they help to pour drinks and chat with staff about the importance of eating fruit.
• The hard-working staff receive ongoing supervision, coaching and professional development opportunities. The manager regularly reviews and self-evaluates the nursery provision. She implements action plans to drive continual improvement. For example, after the staff attend a training course on environments, she put many natural resources into the nursery to widen the children's curiosity and investigation skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• make better use of spontaneous opportunities to support older children's early mathematical skills to help them to count and recognise numbers during play.