Glebe Kids

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children benefit exceptionally well from attending this caring and nurturing setting, where staff are highly effective at prioritising and meeting children's individual needs. They develop into the special and unique individuals that they are. Children are confident and show that they feel very safe and secure. They are completely content in their surroundings due to the excellent relationships they have with staff. Younger children laugh with delight as they make funny faces in the mirror. Staff immediately use this opportunity to build on children's understanding of their own and other's emotions. Children know what staff expect of them from an early age, and their behaviour is exemplary.

The richly resourced and highly inviting environment motivates children to be deeply engaged in their chosen play. Older children are extremely imaginative. They share their interest in space with their friends and pretend to walk on the moon and search for treasure. Children thoroughly enjoy their time in the cosy reading shed. They show an exceptional love of books throughout the setting. Children benefit from high-quality interactions from staff, who instinctively follow children's desire to learn. They work out how to secure different lengths of tubing together to enable water to flow from one end to another without any leaks. Children use tools to crush coloured chalks to recreate what they have learned about volcanos and lava. They experiment how the consistency of chalk changes when they add water and lemon juice. Children are active writers and make predictions and comparisons to solve complex mathematical problems.

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

• Children are at the heart of everything the staff do. They thrive at this setting and learn what they need to be successful in their future. Staff have an excellent understanding of what each child knows and needs to learn next. They use this information to plan activities carefully to help children achieve the next steps in their learning. This means that children make exceptional progress.
• Children behave impeccably. Staff support children to identify their emotions and talk to them about the reasons they might feel like this. They teach children many important social skills, such as turn-taking. This means that children play harmoniously with each other, and older children successfully regulate their own behaviour.
• The manager is incredibly dedicated to her role and provides exceptional professional development opportunities for staff to consistently ensure best practice. She completes identified targeted training herself, before her staff, to ensure it is of the highest quality. This also enables her to support staff in what they learn to implement excellent practice.
• Children's communication and language skills are outstanding. All staff have received specialist training to effectively support children to be articulate and expressive communicators. They share their knowledge with staff at other settings to support outcomes for other children. Younger children ask inquisitive questions, and older children are taught the meaning of new words to build on what they know about life cycles, such as 'proboscis' and 'metamorphosis'.
• The needs of children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities are quickly identified. The skilled staff team puts instant support in place in partnership with parents and external professionals. They ensure that children who may be falling behind in any aspect of learning benefit from early intervention. This means that they make very good progress in relation to their starting points.
• Staff's well-being is high on the manager's agenda, and staff feel cared for and valued. They are enthusiastic and proud of their roles and often enjoy long careers at this setting. Staff explain how they regard the team as an extension of their own 'family'. The manager speaks highly of her staff, who she values enormously.
• Parents are overwhelmingly positive about the setting. They welcome the excellent communication they receive from staff that ensures they are fully involved in every aspect of their children's learning. Parents describe the staff team as 'incredible', where they provide children with wonderful experiences. They receive a wealth of innovative ideas to continue to support their children's learning at home. Staff warmly welcome parents and children's extended family into the setting for regular events, where children proudly show them what they enjoy and are learning.