Lavendale Montessori

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy when they arrive in nursery and settle into their day with ease. They form warm and secure relationships with their familiar adults who respond to their needs well. Staff embed good behaviour expectations. Children are extremely well behaved. They share, take turns and play cooperatively with and alongside their peers. This provides a secure foundation from which children are eager to learn.

Staff plan and extend children's interests by providing a safe, enabling and stimulating environment for them to play in, either on their own or with peers. Leaders and staff hold ambitious expectations of what they want children to learn. Staff know what children know and can do and what they want them to learn next.

Children develop detailed knowledge across the curriculum, which helps them remember, in the long term, what they have been taught. Babies develop their emerging physical skills as they crawl and learn to walk. Toddlers grow in their independence, moving from nappies to using the toilet and managing their personal care routines. Children in pre-school are confident learners. They make their own decisions, sustain concentration and engage in their chosen activities. For example, children independently and skilfully count the number of counters to the associated numbers.

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

• Leaders have made good progress since the last inspection. They have worked with the local authority early years team to help evaluate their strengths and areas to focus on. Leaders support staff to deliver an ambitious, coherently planned and sequenced curriculum to build on children's progress, including children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• In the main, leaders use effective monitoring to support staff practice and deliver good-quality teaching. Staff say their welfare and well-being are well considered by leaders.
• Leaders and staff place a strong emphasis on children's communication and language. Children enjoy language-rich opportunities to develop their listening, attention and comprehension skills. Staff ensure they use storybooks alongside all activities and plan opportunities for children to enjoy listening to stories. Children join in with nursery rhymes, such as 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' and 'If You're Happy and You Know It'. Pre-school children are introduced to new ideas, concepts and vocabulary, such as 'gravity' as they talk about space and planets.
• Children enjoy freshly prepared, healthy and nutritious snacks and meals. Pre-school children prepare an array of fresh tropical fruits for snack time. Staff teach children to take safe risks as they chop fruit using a knife. Staff ask, 'What size should we cut up the fruit?' They talk about colours, shapes and where fruit comes from. Staff teach children what happens with fruit peel and composting. This provides children with rich opportunities to learn and develop their knowledge and skills for the future.
• Staff place a strong emphasis on helping children with their personal, social and emotional development. Babies show they feel secure and are happy and settled. Staff follow their individual care routines to meet their needs. Children learn to practise their independence and self-care skills. Babies learn to hold a spoon to feed themselves. Toddlers persevere with putting their coats on and off, taking great pride when they do so successfully. Pre-school children practise good hygiene, such as handwashing, which is integral to their routines. This means children are well prepared for the next stage of their developmental journey.
• Occasionally, leaders do not fully support staff with less experience to use high-quality interactions with children during lunchtimes. This means that children do not always continuously develop their language skills during all routines.
• Occasionally, staff do not organise group times well enough to fully support children's learning. For example, some children, who are at the back, are not able to fully engage or focus. This has a minor impact on their quality of education.
• Parents speak highly of the leaders and staff. They value the personalised approach and the communication they receive about their children's care and learning. Leaders and staff welcome parents to come and read stories to children. This builds children's continuity of care and learning between home and the nursery.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review and organise group activity times even better to make sure all children engage and fully participate
• strengthen arrangements for staff mentoring to further support staff with less experience to develop their practice to the highest levels.