Chestnut Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily enter the vibrant and richly resourced nursery. Staff greet children with enthusiasm, love and affection, which helps children to feel safe and secure. Children settle quickly after placing their photograph on a coat peg, and are eager to start playing. Babies and toddlers babble and smile at staff's nurturing interactions. Staff give them the confidence to explore tactile activities and practise their developing mobility using physical equipment. Staff celebrate everyone's uniqueness. This helps the culturally diverse families and staff team to feel respected, valued and included.

Overall, staff plan very effective educational programmes that meet children's often complex needs and help children to make good progress. This includes children who enter below developmental expectations, those in receipt of additional funding and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. For example, staff put in place intense interventions and work in excellent partnership with other professionals.

Staff effectively prepare older children for going to school. Children are keen learners and highly sociable as they create a habitat together for the frog they find in the garden, for instance. Staff support them to follow the nursery rules and enjoy tasks, such as setting up for lunch. As they do this, staff build on their early mathematical skills. Children aged two enjoy learning physical skills, such as stepping across plastic crates. They enjoy singing, which builds on their early language. Staff use activities, such as planting, growing and cooking sessions with the nursery chef, to help children learn about healthy eating.

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

• Staff support new children starting nursery extremely well, for example, through stay-and-play sessions and home visits. They gather extensive information about each child and create an exceptional home-from-home environment to help children settle in. Staff monitor children's progress at nursery closely. They swiftly identify and address any developmental delays, including those arising from the pandemic, to help children to catch up.
• Staff plan a wealth of exciting activities that, largely, engage children well. However, care practices and the curriculum, which includes whole group carpet time, do not consistently fully align with two-year-old children's developmental stage. Staff do not always recognise when children require increased adult support to engage and develop their language, and manage self-care skills.
• Children love playing outdoors, which they freely access. They develop confidence and physical skills as they whizz around on wheeled toys and use the natural environment, such as trees, to build a den using scarves.
• Children learn amazing facts about the world around them. For example, during a bug hunt, they find what they think is a worm. Staff share in children's excitement and explain that although it looks like a worm, the insect has lots of tiny legs and is, in fact, a centipede.
• Children develop excellent small-muscle strength and hand-to-eye coordination. For example, they use different resources to make marks, pour drinks, serve home-made chilli and rice and explore limitless tactile media that ignites their curiosity. Babies squeeze sponges and toddlers scoop foam using metal measuring spoons. Children aged two enthusiastically knead play dough while making pretend pizzas. Older children dress dolls, use pipettes and twist jar lids on and off.
• Parents and carers access a wealth of services that help them meet their children's needs, such as workshops and sessions with healthcare professionals. Staff plan events, such as multicultural celebrations, a seaside trip and community trails, initially set up during the pandemic. They encourage parents and carers to access rhyme time and use the library facility to support children's language and literacy skills.
• Staff use a wide variety of methods to communicate with parents and carers, including sharing children's assessments and next steps in learning electronically. However, information is not consistently shared with those less confident in the use of technology, to ensure they receive the same key messages to support children.
• Overall, staff's qualifications, and further training, positively impacts their practice. They expand children's learning through their enthusiastic interactions. For example, as children develop imagination skills in the exciting small world dinosaur swamp, staff explain that a 'herbivore' eats plants.
• The passionate leadership team reflect on and improve practice in many ways, such as through accreditation schemes. They continue to focus on strengthening the coaching and mentoring of staff, especially those less qualified or experienced.
• The provider has not followed the correct process for promptly notifying Ofsted of an additional director. However, relevant forms had been submitted before the inspection. The impact on children is minimised as this individual has been subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service check and was known to Ofsted under a different role.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus teaching and the curriculum more precisely on younger children's individual care and learning needs, to fully engage them and help them to make the best possible progress
• extend the strategies for sharing information with parents and carers about children's learning and how they can support children further at home.