Bright Bambini Montessori (Eastfield)

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and settle well. Staff take time to get to know children and their families well. They provide tailored settling-in arrangements to ensure children's individual needs are met. Staff understand that for children to be ready to learn, they need to feel safe and secure. When children new to the setting become unsettled, they adapt their approach well to help children to navigate the transition at their own pace. Children form good bonds with staff and show through their body language that they feel safe and secure. They listen to staff, follow instructions and behave well. Staff help children learn to share and take turns as they play.

Although the nursery has only recently opened, children are showing good progress in the short time that they have been attending. The experienced manager has established a curriculum that is clearly sequenced to help children build on what they know and can do. The curriculum, and the steps towards achieving the curriculum aims, are shared with staff effectively. Children show increased control and self-confidence in large physical movements, such as when they climb the steps or climbing wall to access the slide in the garden. They build muscle control as they manipulate play dough and use sticks to make marks in the sand.

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

• The well-qualified manager uses her professional knowledge to establish an effective curriculum and ensures her staff understand the aims and ethos of the nursery. She trains staff well to understand how to support children's typical development and gain the skills they need to support their future education and life.
• Staff know children very well. They are enthusiastic and reflective practitioners who strive to improve and provide children with stimulating learning experiences. Staff assess children's progress and plan effectively to support their emerging next steps. They share this information with parents regularly and provide ideas of how parents can support children's ongoing learning at home.
• Staff say that they are supported well by the manager to fulfil their roles. They add that they receive appropriate training and coaching that helps them to improve and develop their practice. Staff are supported to gain professional early years qualifications and that they feel valued by the manager. Staff are enthusiastic to implement ideas from training events that they attend, such as developing further ways to help children build strong foundations to support literacy at school.
• Parents are positive about the nursery. They say that they are well informed about their child's day and what they need to learn next. Parents state that their children enjoy coming to the nursery. They notice the progress their child makes such as learning to share and take turns and putting on their coats independently.
• A large number of children attending the nursery speak English as an additional language. Staff who speak children's home languages ably support their understanding and help them to learn English. Children listen to stories that staff read with increasing understanding and start to join in with familiar songs and rhymes. Staff know that children benefit from repetition in learning and provide lots of opportunities to practise.
• Children build a strong 'can do' attitude. They receive lots of praise from staff to keep trying when they learn new skills. Children learn how to use safety knives to cut fruit and vegetables. They practise pouring drinks from jugs daily. As well as building their confidence to do things for themselves, these skills develop hand-to-eye coordination, ready for reading and writing when they move to school.
• Staff work well in partnership with other professionals. They develop links with the Literacy Trust and the local library bus to help to promote children's love of books, stories and rhymes.
• Sometimes, staff become absorbed in small group activities and do not notice when other children are less engaged and tend to wander. This reduces opportunities for some children to benefit from good-quality interactions with staff that help them develop English language skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus continuous professional development opportunities for staff so that children are engaged in meaningful and consistently high-quality interactions that help them build good English language skills.