Farrance Road Nursery and Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show that they feel happy, safe and secure in this welcoming and stimulating environment. Children benefit from an exciting and creative curriculum and show high levels of interest and engagement as they explore and learn. Staff create a wonderful atmosphere and have high expectations for children's learning and behaviour. They are positive role models and teach children about expected boundaries in a consistent way. Babies enjoy singing nursery rhymes and exploring musical instruments. This helps to support their language development and awareness of rhythm and rhyme. They also have fun exploring water play and a wide range of natural resources. This supports them to develop their curiosity and to learn through their senses.

Toddlers enjoy the process of racing cars and observing the tyre tracks created by paint. Staff join in with lots of enthusiasm and help children to count and use positional language as they play. This helps to support children's early mathematical knowledge. Toddlers display good levels of enjoyment as they explore play dough. Staff use fresh herbs and vegetables to extend their learning and skilfully incorporate lots of descriptive language as they play.

Pre-school children show deep concentration as they explore shaving foam and building blocks. Staff foster their thinking skills and language development as they ask them questions about how it feels and smells. In addition, children learn new facts and knowledge as they explore messy-play activities with bugs. Staff effectively support children to build on their prior knowledge as they play.

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

• The nursery is led by a knowledgeable and ambitious manager who is reflective and committed to continuous improvement. He is very supportive and places the children's needs at the centre of everything he does. This helps to create a very dedicated team that provides high-quality experiences for the children that attend.
• Staff work hard to make learning fun. The educational activities on offer capture children's imagination and interest extremely well. Staff closely monitor children's development and swiftly identify any gaps in their learning and plan interesting activities to help them to move forward and progress. It is evident that children flourish under their care.
• Children have positive opportunities to learn through music, dance and singing. Staff engage in specialist training to make music sessions interactive and fun. This helps to build children's confidence, listening skills and creativity.
• Children have frequent opportunities to play outdoors in the well-planned learning spaces. Children enjoy digging and planting, as well as more active experiences that help to develop their gross motor skills, such as their balance and coordination.
• Supporting healthy lifestyles is given high focus. For instance, children benefit from nutritious meals and staff teach them the benefits of making healthy choices to help them to grow and develop.
• Children benefit from attending an inclusive setting where each individual child and family are valued. Staff arrange a variety of events to help children learn about others' lives that are different to their own. For instance, they enjoy dressing up, dancing and exploring the festival of light during Diwali. This extends children's knowledge of the world and helps them to develop respectful attitudes.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities receive good levels of support. Staff work in close partnership with other professionals to set targets and review children's progress. Staff also use lots of visual aids and transitional objects to help to support children's understanding of routines.
• Parents express high levels of appreciation and gratitude for their children's experiences at the nursery. They value how kind and caring the staff are and the good communication they receive, both verbally and on the nursery app, that helps them to feel involved in their children's learning.
• Overall, children benefit from a rich language environment. However, some staff working with babies do not always maximise opportunities that arise to extend and challenge children's language skills and learning to the very highest level.
• Children have good opportunities to learn about the wider world. However, their opportunities to learn through more first-hand visits and trips would deepen their knowledge even further.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the interactions of some staff working with babies during play, to extend and challenge their language skills and learning to an even higher level
• build on opportunities for children to learn about the wider world and local environment through more first-hand experiences.