Gerrards Cross Montessori Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The nursery is filled with happy and confident children, who show good perseverance and express delight when they achieve what they set out to do. Babies create close bonds with the skilled staff, which helps them to feel safe. Toddlers develop their self-care skills and older children start to learn to manage their feelings and emotions. Managers and staff have created a curriculum that focuses on children developing their independence and overall confidence. Staff have high expectations of children and support their emotional well-being effectively. Children form secure friendships, and they share what they have been doing since the last time they were in nursery with their friends. Staff are well deployed and supervise children with vigilance. Staff who are first-aid trained know how to deal with accidents and injuries and record these well. Managers then use these records to support their ongoing risk assessments to help keep children safe.

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

• Managers and staff share the same passion for their roles and the desire for children to make the best possible progress. They meet regularly as a team and keep their knowledge and skills up to date through development opportunities, such as training and support from peers, to help staff improve their professional development. The nursery has worked closely with the local authority to support this.
• The staff know the children in their care well. They monitor their progress and quickly identify any gaps in children's learning. Staff plan activities knowing children's next stages of learning. They engage with the children at key moments to extend their knowledge beyond what they already know. All children make good progress from their starting points.
• The nursery's partnership working is good. Links with parents and external professionals are rooted in trust and respect. Parents comment that staff are 'amazing and really care for the children'. Staff provide daily updates to parents and share ideas to help extend their children's learning at home.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are supported well. The knowledgeable staff work closely with parents and other professionals to agree targeted plans to support each child. Staff provide a highly inclusive environment where they value all children and understand their individual needs.
• The curriculum for physical development is a strength of the setting. Staff carefully consider how to support children to develop their physical skills during all parts of the day. Children have plenty of opportunities to develop their climbing and balancing skills. They climb up and down slides and jump and balance outside. Staff support children to develop their fine motor skills. They encourage them to squeeze play dough, paint or develop their cutting skills as they create pictures.
• Children develop a good awareness of their own health and well-being. They enjoy a variety of freshly prepared foods and snacks and spend lots of time in the fresh air. Individual care routines are followed and staff support children through developmental milestones, such as toilet training, effectively.
• Overall, children behave well. Staff act as positive role models and rules are in place, such as being kind to others and treating others with respect. However, when children display unwanted behaviour, staff do not always explain why it is not acceptable. This means that children do not always understand why they cannot do things and, consequently, despite being told 'no', they continue.
• Children love listening to familiar stories and nursery rhymes. They join in with key phrases and actions. Staff encourage the children to talk about the characters in the stories and to recall the main events. Overall, staff introduce new words, such as 'Armadillo' and 'Toucan', and talk about their meanings to help extend children's vocabulary. However, staff do not consistently help children to hear or learn to use the correct pronunciation of some words to develop their speech and communication as much as possible.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop consistency in the quality of teaching of children's communication and language development, so that children hear correct pronunciations
• support staff to be consistent in their behaviour management strategies to support children to learn why their unwanted behaviour is not acceptable.