Grand West Pre-Prep

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The setting offers a welcoming, engaging and immersive environment where children thrive and enjoy learning. Children have secure and close relationships with staff. This ensures that children settle easily and independently. Parents are welcomed into the setting and have positive and highly effective relationships with staff, resulting in children feeling safe and being enthusiastic learners.

Children's behaviour is exemplary. They display high levels of respect for others and their environment. Children have excellent opportunities to learn and achieve across all areas of learning. Younger children enjoy playing outside, where they run, jump and to learn how to balance. Pre-school children develop excellent skills in literacy and mathematics. They participate in activities connected with letters and sounds. They are curious and motivated and use this experience to practise their early writing and reading skills.

Staff have an excellent understanding of what each child knows and needs to learn next. They use this information to plan exciting activities that engage and inspire the children. This means children make exceptional progress. Staff are superb role models and want every child to achieve highly.

Children love books and share stories about the bear hunt and Handa's surprise. They engage in conversations and role play. Children use props, musical instruments and their rich and developed vocabulary to re-tell the stories.

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

• Leaders and staff provide an exceptionally broad and balanced curriculum based on the nursery's approach. Children are at the centre of all they do. Staff skilfully use every opportunity to enhance children's knowledge. For example, children show an interest in parts of the body, so staff provide relevant books and images that spark their imagination. Children are inspired and this evolves into learning about bones, the skeleton and the brain. Children create a three-dimensional model of this. Later, they are able to recall the skills they have learned and make connections to other parts of their learning. Children are expertly prepared for the next stage of learning, including moving on to school.
• Children demonstrate high levels of concentration, perseverance and resilience, even when things become challenging. Outdoors, they work together and use resources such as crates, wooden beams, stepping stones and mats to create an obstacle course. Children carefully place the beams on crates, experimenting with them at different levels and arranging mats for safety. They support one another with balancing, climbing and negotiating the course. Children encourage and help one another when they fall and motivate one another to carry on.
• They, smile and laugh together and are excited to share their achievements.
• Children are independent in their own self-care skills. They prepare their own snack, wash up their cup and plate and access drinking water independently. Children wipe up spillages and tidy up after themselves, and understand that this keeps them safe. They wash their hands independently and discuss the fact that it is important 'to keep germs away'. Children use the calming areas of the nursery if they feel tired or frustrated. They select self-regulation tools, sensory toys and books to help them manage their emotions. This results in children being confident with high levels of self-esteem.
• Managers and leaders are dedicated and continually strive for the best outcomes for children. Staff constantly monitor children's learning. They initiate early interventions to ensure children receive additional support where necessary. As a result, all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those who speak English as an additional language, make excellent overall progress in relation to their starting points.
• Parents describe the setting as 'amazing' and leaders and staff as 'exceptional', saying that they go above and beyond to support their children with their learning. Staff ensure that they are easily accessible to parents. Leaders organise workshops for parents to share the nursery's curriculum and support learning at home. Parents share their own skills by telling stories in their home languages, providing support with outings and sharing their own cultural experiences, for example at Diwali and Christmas.
• Leaders work extremely hard to support staff in developing their teaching skills. They have a strong understanding of each member of staff's strengths and next steps in their professional development. Staff speak highly of managers and leaders and the professional development opportunities available to them. Leaders have put steps in place to ensure staff well-being is supported. This ensures teaching is of exceptionally high quality.