Castle Nurseries at Dunstanburgh Road

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children benefit from exceptional quality interactions with staff at this inviting and stimulating setting. They show that they feel safe and secure as they immerse themselves in experiments and games, such as finding out what object can move the fastest down a hill in the nursery garden. Children use balls, toy vehicles and pipes to conduct their experiment. Staff offer questions to help children to enhance their already excellent imagination and thinking skills. Children are inquisitive and make predictions as they play. Staff celebrate with them as they solve problems they encounter. This helps to effectively promote children's self-esteem.

Staff are superb role models. They encourage children to develop remarkable friendships with each other. This includes children being able to resolve minor conflicts between themselves and learning to recognise how others are feeling. Staff use emotive language to acknowledge children's emotions from young babies to pre-school age. This helps children to recognise how their own feelings and behaviours may impact on others. Staff complete precise assessments of children's learning and astutely plan for what children need to learn next. This helps them to provide an appropriately challenging and ambitious curriculum for all children that helps them to build on their excellent skills ready for starting school.

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

• Managers have detailed action plans in place that help them to continuously review the overall quality of the setting. They have worked exceptionally hard to maintain the highest standards of care and education for all children since their last inspection. They provide high levels of support and training for staff. This includes performance reviews and utilising staff's expertise. For instance, staff have additional lead roles and share their knowledge with other staff. This includes safeguarding responsibilities in specialist subjects, such as domestic violence and the impact of this on families.
• Managers and staff work very closely with schools and other professionals. This includes sharing training and completing research projects to provide a consistent approach to children's learning and development needs. Staff work on specific targets and action plans for individual children set by external professionals. This includes focused time for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Managers review the needs of individual children to help them identify how additional funding is to be used. For instance, children benefit from music, movement and dance sessions, specialist communication and language focused groups as well as yoga sessions. This has a remarkable impact on children's personal, social and emotional development as well as helping to develop children's physical and communication skills.
• Children's communication and language skills are threaded throughout all aspects of practice. Staff use exciting props, puppets and resources to maintain children's engagement in learning and play. Managers and staff arrange targeted support sessions for parents during holiday times to help to continue children's learning at home. Staff use rich vocabulary, introducing new words and phrases through conversations and story time sessions. As a result, children are able to communicate very well with others.
• Children follow excellent hygiene practices. Staff talk to children about why it is important to wash their hands. They involve children in experiments using lotion and glitter and show that the glitter represents germs as it spreads. Children show that they understand the need to use soap when they are unable to wash the glitter away when just running their hands under water. Young children access tissues independently when they need to wipe their nose and manage their self-care needs. Mealtimes are a social occasion for all children. They offer to help serve one another and complete tasks, such as handing out plates and cutlery. Children show excellent levels of independence.
• Partnership working with parents is a particular strength of the setting. Parents give the highest praise for managers and staff for their support, not only for their children but their wider family. Parents comment that managers and staff have provided advice and guidance, including signposting to external groups and organisations. Parents are provided with in-depth feedback about their children's learning and development. This includes sharing assessment information. There is a designated lending library space in the setting, where parents and children can sit together to choose story books to take home. This helps to provide a consistent approach to children's learning.
• Children explore the extensive outdoor area and demonstrate their excellent physical skills. This includes creating obstacle courses using crates and tyres, they lift logs and wooden stumps and discover various insects underneath, Children climb trees and investigate their world around them.
• Staff support children to understand how they are unique. They talk to children about how they are similar and also different to others. Staff talk to children about why they wear glasses and why they need glasses to help them to see. Children join in with celebrations and festivals and learn about their own traditions and those different to their own. This helps to develop children's understanding of the wider world.