Be Me Day Nursery Highbury

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children flourish in this welcoming and nurturing learning environment. They develop strong emotional attachments with staff, and show that they feel happy and secure. Staff have high expectations for children's learning and behaviour. They are excellent role models and treat children with high levels of respect. As a result, children are highly confident, motivated and behave extremely well. Staff successfully plan an exceptionally rich and exciting curriculum that captures children's interests and challenges their learning. This includes many educational trips and outings to help children to learn through first-hand experiences. As a result, children make excellent progress and develop a love of learning.

Babies benefit from loving interactions. For instance, staff ask them for consent before placing them on their stomachs for 'tummy time' to support their physical development. They also provide lots of encouragement and reassurance as they play. This helps babies to develop their curiosity and confidence. Babies also have fun exploring sensory trays and are supported to learn rich new language, such as 'sweet', 'sour' and 'crumbly' when exploring lemons and limes.

Toddlers develop excellent levels of independence and self-assurance. They show great pride in being 'the helper of the day' and setting the table for lunch. Toddlers' knowledge of the wider world is fostered extremely well. For instance, toddlers enjoy going on a trip to the local greengrocer to buy fruits. On their return, they then create fruit smoothies, showing a rapidly growing vocabulary. Pre-school children are highly inquisitive and articulate. They demonstrate excellent knowledge and engage in meaningful conversations with the staff and their friends. They show extremely high levels of enthusiasm as they make mud castles outdoors, and show wonder when learning about sea creatures to celebrate World Oceans Day.

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

• Leaders are exceptionally ambitious in their desire to support all children to reach their full potential. They perceptively review the strengths and identify areas for further improvements. For example, leaders prioritise training sessions to enhance how staff strengthen children's communication skills and further develop their outdoor learning provision.
• Staff are highly qualified and have excellent opportunities to engage in ongoing professional development. They also receive frequent and sharply focused coaching and support. This helps staff to be influential in shaping the vibrant and broad curriculum, and in making positive changes to the provision. As a result, children benefit from high-quality learning experiences.
• Partnership working with parents is superb. Parents express that staff are dedicated and passionate about their work. They state there is a real depth to the relationships they form. Parents value the communication and twice daily updates about their children's activities and learning. Many parents describe the excellent support they received during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, they comment on the regular creative activities to support their children's home learning and supportive conversations to enhance their parenting skills.
• All children, including those who speak English as an additional language and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, are given extremely high levels of support to help to achieve the best possible outcomes. This is evident when staff frequently use key words in children's home languages to help them to understand English. Excellent partnership working with external professionals ensures that children have high levels of consistency when working on targets to facilitate their future learning.
• Staff place an extremely high emphasis on supporting children's well-being and emotional development. For instance, they help children to understand about different feelings when using an emotion dice. Staff support discussions about what makes children feel happy and sad. Staff working with older children are skillful in helping children to learn how their actions make others feel. As a result, children are happy and show kindness to each other.
• Leaders and staff create a culturally rich and diverse learning environment. Staff organise many cultural events and activities to celebrate each child's uniqueness, and to help them to learn about their differences. The atmosphere and curriculum successfully helps children to develop high self-esteem and highly respectful attitudes.
• Leaders give staff's well-being high priority. Staff state that they feel highly appreciated. They have regular opportunities to engage in yoga and relaxation sessions to enhance their overall well-being. Staff also receive self-care bags and treats to boost their morale. Many staff discuss the benefits of becoming 'classroom ambassadors' that champion different aspects of practice, such as promoting positive behaviour and supporting children to take more risks in their play.