Highlands Village Pre-School LTD

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders and staff provide an inspirational and ambitious curriculum that engages children exceptionally well. Staff provide an enticing environment with plentiful resources and natural materials. They encourage children to freely explore and experiment in a variety of imaginative ways. Staff interact and communicate with the children effectively. They instinctively know when to provide children with extra support to extend their understanding or step back and let children develop their own learning. Staff sensitively engage with children to enhance their play and learning experiences. Staff model an extensive range of vocabulary. Children consistently hear and practise new words, becoming confident communicators.

Staff are nurturing and caring and have excellent bonds with children. Staff discuss how enabling children across the nursery to mingle and play together at different times throughout the day benefits them. It helps to strengthen children's social skills and allows them to build bonds with all the staff. Children display excellent behaviour and are aware of and attentive to the way children feel and express their emotions. Staff encourage children to talk about their feelings in a variety of ways. For example, children use an emotion board to put their own pictures and write the corresponding emotion, indicating how they feel.

Children thrive and are making rapid progress in their learning and development. Staff know the children exceptionally well. All staff take great pride in celebrating children's achievements, such as when they dig for worms and become captivated as they watch them move through the soil. Staff's praise boosts children's confidence and self-esteem. Children are eager to try new things and have a 'can-do' attitude. They fully engross themselves in activities. For instance, they maintain the highest levels of concentration as they use sparkly beads and jewels to decorate mermaids' tails.

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

• Leaders and staff are extremely passionate about providing high-quality care and education. They have initiated several measures to support the children and their parents. For example, to support parents and children through new experiences and emotional change, staff send books home for children to read with their parents.
• Staff work exceptionally well as a team and seamlessly deploy themselves to best support children's learning. They skilfully interact with children as they play and use their knowledge to continually extend what children know and can do. For example, older children are encouraged to share and recall their experiences, predict and problem-solve. They assess risks themselves, such as when negotiating their self-made obstacle courses.
• Staff receive regular supervision and complete a variety of training. They say that they greatly enjoy working with the children and show that they are reflective on their roles and how these can develop or be improved. Staff consistently comment that their well-being is a priority and that they feel extremely supported to fulfil their roles.
• Children's well-being is important to staff. Staff are excellent role models and reinforce the positive behaviour that children display, gently correcting unwanted behaviour and reinforcing positive behaviour with their meaningful acknowledgement. The attentive staff promptly acknowledge all children's efforts, providing instant reinforcement for this positive behaviour.
• Children learn about and lead healthy lifestyles. They enjoy healthy snacks and discuss why they need to drink water and the importance of good hygiene. Children greatly enjoy being in the fresh air. Children imaginatively use natural resources and cooperate with each other to manoeuvre planks, logs, tyres and decorated cardboard boxes to make vehicles and pretend to be pirates on a ship. Staff encourage children's creativity and bring the different areas of learning into these occasions to meaningfully extend children's experiences and skills.
• Leaders and staff work swiftly with parents and other professionals when they identify children's emerging needs. Children benefit from the highly effective partnerships in place with local schools and local authority advisers. The special educational needs coordinator has created comprehensive speech and language programmes, which enable staff to swiftly implement bespoke support for children. Children's communication and social skills, along with learning to self-regulate emotions, are a focus since the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Partnerships with parents are excellent. Parents are highly complimentary of the care provided to their children and the progress they make. They describe the staff as 'inspirational', 'creative' and 'caring'. They also comment on the great communication and say that they feel lucky to be a part of this exceptional nursery. Staff encourage parents to share their expertise. Parents come to the nursery to read stories to children or share cultural festivals and traditions.
• Children receive an enriching programme of learning about other cultures and their local community. Children relish outings into the local community. For instance, they learn road safety as they carefully cross the roads when visiting the large supermarket to buy a variety of foods for their snack. In addition, there are bilingual resources, and parents receive encouragement to share their backgrounds so that staff can authentically incorporate them in activities. Staff develop a positive community spirit to enhance the children's sense of belonging in their local area.