High Legh Preschool Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy attending this warm and welcoming nursery. They are excited to begin their day and immediately seek out their friends and staff to share experiences with. Children are curious and motivated to learn and eagerly participate in the array of age-appropriate activities provided for them. Young children develop their creative skills as they use glue and collage materials to create pictures. Older children show fascination in the natural world around them as they hunt for worms in the garden using magnifying glasses. Their mathematical understanding grows as they have plentiful opportunities to count and compare shapes and sizes. Children are encouraged to test out their ideas and theories. For example, they create a structure for cars to travel on using lengths of plastic piping. Together, they calculate whether the pipes should be placed flat or on an angle to enable the cars to move.

Leaders and staff have high expectations of what they want children to achieve, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff are very aware of the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on children and are extremely sensitive to this. Children's personal, social and emotional development has been a strong focus. Subsequently, children are confident in social situations. They are resilient and show high levels of self-esteem.

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

• Overall, children behave very well. Staff working in the pre-school room use continuous positive reinforcement to help children to understand what is expected of them. They carefully explain to children why some behaviours are not welcomed. They model kind and patient behaviour themselves and gently encourage children to share and take turns. However, staff working with younger children are less skilled at implementing the nursery's expectations with regard to children's behaviour. For example, they do not always acknowledge when children are engaging in potentially unsafe play, or offer clear and consistent reminders to help young children to understand right from wrong.
• Children thoroughly enjoy listening to stories. Young children choose their favourite books and snuggle together with staff. Children are encouraged to turn the pages independently and talk about what they see in the pictures. Staff working with older children ask open-ended questions that encourage children to think and develop their language skills. Furthermore, staff model conversations and ensure that children hear a rich variety of vocabulary. However, as children write familiar letters from their names, staff do not always accurately model the correct pronunciation of letter sounds.
• Children's emotional well-being is given high priority. On a daily basis, children are encouraged to identify how they are feeling and share this with staff and friends. Children talk about feeling happy and sad. This helps children to acknowledge and regulate their feelings. Furthermore, through these discussions, children develop empathy for one another and show kindness and concern as they discuss how they can make their friends feel happier.
• Children thoroughly enjoy exploring and investigating the wonderful outdoor areas. They engage in daily physical and energetic play, regardless of the weather. They climb, run, jump and balance, developing their large-muscle skills. They learn about living things, grow vegetables and develop an understanding of how to keep themselves safe when playing outside.
• The management team, including the committee, support the staff well. Staff are well qualified and are passionate and enthusiastic. Staff participate in regular team meetings and supervision sessions, and have good access to training to help advance their professional development. However, the acting manager, who is relatively new in her post, is yet to explore how staff can learn from one another and share best practice. That said, both she and the co-chair have a clear vision for improvement. They are dedicated and committed to achieving the very best possible outcomes for children.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents welcome the information that staff share about their children's learning and development and how they can further support this at home with a variety of activity suggestions. Furthermore, they explain how staff have supported them to manage their children's behaviour at home through the sharing of resources and strategies. Parents are extremely complimentary. Their written responses highlight the progress and achievements that their children have made since attending, describing them as 'thriving'.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff working in the baby room to consistently implement behaviour strategies and promote expectations
• develop staff's confidence in supporting children's literacy skills so that children always hear the correct pronunciation of letter sounds
• develop strategies for staff to learn from one another and share best practice.