Buckingham First Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The highly skilled nursery staff create an exceptionally nurturing and caring environment for children and their families. There is a strong focus on promoting emotional literacy for children. This includes staff spending time with children to talk about their feelings and help them to recognise a range of emotions. Staff encourage conversations, and they discuss how various situations may make children feel. This helps children to recognise their own feelings and behaviours.

Children play harmoniously and form strong friendship groups. They show respect and kindness towards one another. This includes creating superb imaginary play games. Children use real fruit and vegetables and aprons as they make up recipes in the role-play corner. They use their mathematical skills as they find out how many of the different ingredients they need to create their mixture.

There is a highly ambitious, broad, and structured curriculum in place that helps to build children's knowledge in all areas of learning. Staff use accurate assessments to review planned activities and to support children to develop excellent skills, ready for school. Staff swiftly identify any gaps in children's learning and put excellent support strategies in place. This includes superb support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

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

• The nursery benefits from an extremely strong, motivated, and knowledgeable leadership team. They lead a team of dynamic and enthusiastic staff, who are proud of their accomplishments and who strive to enable children to be the very best that they can be. The manager has a superb overview of the curriculum, and a comprehensive knowledge of what children need to achieve at each stage of their learning and development.
• Interactions between staff and children are superb. Children show deep levels of engagement in the exciting activities that staff create. For instance, staff expertly build on children's communication and language skills as children play in the role-play home corners. Pre-school children dress up in clothes and pretend to make soups. They busily stir real vegetables in large metal pots, and explain that the radish may taste 'bitter' and the carrots are 'sweet and juicy'.
• Children's health is given the utmost priority. Children enjoy healthy, home-cooked meals, which meet their individual dietary requirements. Children make fruit kebabs and talk about the healthy food on their plates. They know that they need to eat healthy food to make their teeth strong, and say that the dentist will be sad if they eat too much unhealthy food. Staff talk to children about having a little bit of unhealthy food and that it is called a 'balanced diet'.
• Relationships between staff and children are exceptionally kind and caring.
• Children's personal care needs are met sensitively. Babies and children relish the comfort they receive from staff. They demonstrate their feelings of security as they actively seek staff out for a cuddle and involve them in their play.
• Children develop excellent physical skills and spatial awareness. Older children participate in complex obstacle courses in the large garden. They practice using climbing walls and tunnels, and use their whole bodies to throw tea bags with paint at paper on the garden walls. Toddlers enjoy digging collaboratively in the large indoor sandpit, while babies giggle as they pass large sensory balls to their friends. Additionally, they have opportunities to play various sports with the specialised coach who comes to the setting. These activities support them in forming healthy habits for their future.
• The manager is extremely supportive of the staff team. Staff speak very highly of how they feel valued and listened to. The manager promotes staff's well-being and completes very regular supervision sessions and team meetings. Staff are highly skilled and are eager to complete extensive training. They participate in the evaluation of the setting. For instance, they recently completed communication and language training to enhance the already rich language environment.
• Children are highly independent across all areas of their learning and development. They make choices in their play and independently help themselves to their food at lunchtime using tongs and spoons. There is a strong emphasis on encouraging children to develop their self-help skills in readiness for the next stage of their learning and the move on to school.
• Parents are involved in all aspects of their children's care and learning. They receive detailed communication from staff regarding children's observations and assessments. In addition, parents are invited into the setting with their families to participate in well-planned stay-and-play sessions. Parents praise the manager and the staff for their commitment and passion for their roles. Staff provide exciting home-link activity ideas for parents and children to enjoy at home. This helps to provide a continued approach to children's learning.