Chestnut @ Cottenham

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children flourish in this extremely welcoming nursery. The dedicated and committed management team have created a highly stimulating environment. They have thoughtfully planned the playrooms to encourage cooperative play and enhance children's language and social skills. Staff display resources very attractively, so children can easily access them and make choices about their play. This, along with staff's high-quality interaction, successfully supports children to become highly confident and independent learners. Children happily skip into the nursery, excited to start their day. The friendly and caring staff greet the children and their families warmly. Throughout the nursery there is a calm atmosphere as children become engrossed in their play, exploring the wealth of enticing activities planned for them. Staff make brilliant use of activity trays and babies eagerly explore a superb range of resources.

Children benefit from an extremely exciting and ambitious curriculum, based on stories. It offers a wealth of learning activities and experiences that capture children's interests and builds on their knowledge and skills. Older children learn about healthy foods as they enjoy the book about 'Oliver's Vegetables'. They eagerly explore real vegetables in the role-play areas. Toddlers thoroughly enjoy listening to the story about 'The Boy Who Switched Off the Sun'. They become fascinated with rockets and 'going into space'. Staff extend children's vocabulary, as they explain words, such as 'solar-powered', 'dazzling' and 'spiralling'. They expertly prepare older children for school. For example, they take children to meet their teachers and visit their classrooms before they start.

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

• Staff give children's emotional well-being their highest priority. They have created a culture in which children can freely discuss their feelings. Staff provide children with key vocabulary and relevant resources that will help them to identify and label their emotions. They use stories, role-play situations and discussions to support children to reflect on their experiences.
• The manager successfully monitors and reviews the quality of the nursery provision and the progress children make. Any gaps in their learning are swiftly addressed. Staff provide highly effective support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). They attend specific training, and work closely with parents and other professionals to ensure that children receive tailored, individual programmes of support. The manager makes excellent use of additional funding to enhance individual children's nursery experiences.
• There is a strong ethos in the nursery that encourages children to care for each other and their environment. Staff are excellent role models and have extremely high expectations of all children. Children's behaviour is exemplary. Staff provide clear and consistent boundaries to help children understand what is expected of them. For example, they warn children that they have 'five minutes left to play before tidy-up time'.
• Children develop their excellent mathematical skills through hands-on activities. They weigh fruit and vegetables, discovering if they are 'heavy' or 'light'. Staff continually introduce simple mathematical concepts in children's play. For example, children make play-dough pizzas, cutting them into halves and quarters and counting the pieces.
• Children learn about the wider world through a superb range of play resources and visitors to the nursery. Exotic creatures, such as snakes, tarantulas and geckos, are brought into the nursery to meet the children. Children enjoy learning interesting facts about them.
• Children quickly become independent. Babies and toddlers find their own drinks and feed themselves very well. Older children confidently use their knives and forks and put them together on their plates to show they have finished eating. They scrape their plates and wash them up. Staff support older children to use knives safely as they make fruit kebabs. Children show high levels of perseverance as they cut up their fruit and thread the slices onto skewers.
• Parents are extremely complimentary about the nursery and the exceptional progress their children are making. Staff encourage them to be actively involved in their children's learning. Parents are keen to attend events, such as open days, stay and play sessions and special occasions, including 'Father's day breakfasts'. Parents appreciate the excellent support they receive when seeking interventions for children with SEND. The strong partnerships with parents mean that children's learning is supported in the nursery and at home.
• The management team has high expectations of the staff and provides them with excellent support and training opportunities. The manager has exceptional leadership skills and is extremely proud of the enthusiastic and hard-working staff team. Her regular supervision and monitoring of staff practice has resulted in consistently outstanding practice across the nursery. All staff say that they thoroughly enjoy working at the nursery. They comment that feel highly valued and extremely well supported.