Explorers At Hadnall

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children receive a warm and friendly welcome from the kind, caring and enthusiastic staff as they arrive at nursery. This helps them to feel safe immediately. Children are highly motivated learners, who are eager to join in with activities on offer.

Staff spend time getting to know every child well. They carefully plan activities and experiences that children thoroughly enjoy, which link closely to what they want children to learn next. Children sit down with staff to share a book about a monster. They then progress to organising and categorising different coloured pom-poms they have seen in the story, which reinforces their colour recognition. Staff provide them with tweezers to try picking the pom-poms up with, which builds on their coordination and small-muscle skills. Outdoors, children practise balancing and moving in different ways as they construct obstacle courses. Some children express their creativity as they test their own ideas to create musical instruments.

Children develop their independence in a variety of ways. At snack and mealtimes, they serve their own foods and carefully pour their own drinks into cups. Children become confident in managing their own hygiene needs as they take themselves to the bathroom and are supported to learn to wipe their own noses. This helps prepare children for the next stage in their learning.

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

• Leaders and managers are committed to providing children with a high-quality experience. Since the last inspection, they have used self-evaluation extremely well to bring about improvement. Managers have implemented thorough plans to address weaknesses and are passionate about continuous improvement for children attending the setting.
• Leaders and managers have designed a clear and well-sequenced curriculum. Staff fully understand how to implement this and provide children with a broad range of experiences that support and build on their learning. Children regularly visit a local care home, where they interact with other people. They go to a local hardware store to select and purchase resources to extend on their construction interests and skills.
• The nursery has a strong focus on their key-person system. Staff organise activities and routines, so that children benefit from quality time with their key person. As a result, children form warm and secure relationships with staff, which help them to settle in with ease and feel confident in their environment.
• Children develop a strong love for reading. They frequently visit a local mobile library, where they borrow and exchange books. Children are eager to select and choose books based on their interests. Staff are responsive in helping children to find a book about sheep when they show an interest in this. Children know how to treat books with care and respect. They enthusiastically sit down to share books with staff. Staff provide children with books to take home and read with their family, which further promotes their language and literacy development.
• Children participate in regular outings in the local community, where they gain a breadth of knowledge and skills, including how to keep themselves safe. The nursery provides some resources which reflect life in modern Britain. However, children do not yet consistently benefit from teaching opportunities about differences in the community to help them to fully understand and appreciate equality and diversity.
• Children are continuously supported by staff to understand how to manage their feelings and behaviours. Staff provide an array of opportunities throughout the day for children to talk about their feelings. Staff are excellent role models to children. When children do struggle to follow staff's expectations, they gently help to check if their 'listening ears' are working today, or if they need help to turn them on. Children are highly responsive to staff's approaches, which help to keep all children engaged and motivated in their learning.
• Leaders and managers are highly supportive of staff and offer them a rigorous programme of supervision and training. Staff comment that they feel well supported by managers. Managers regularly observe staff's teaching and practice and identify areas for development. However, areas for development in staff's practice are not yet fully embedded to raise the quality of teaching consistently to the highest level.
• Parents are thrilled by the service that the nursery offers. They share praise about the communication they receive from staff and the vast range of opportunities their children experience. Parents consistently state that children are happy to attend and have made significant progress in their learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• extend opportunities for children to learn about equality and diversity, including differences between themselves and others in the world around them
• embed the arrangements in place for monitoring staff's teaching and practice to raise the quality of teaching consistently to the highest level.