Little Barn Owls Nursery and Farm School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are warmly greeted by enthusiastic staff as they arrive at the nursery. Staff gather and make good use of information from parents to help new children to settle. In addition, they support children to smoothly move to their next room. Children who need reassurance are sensitively supported by staff. This helps them feel secure.

Leaders develop a well-structured curriculum that builds on children's knowledge, understanding and skills as they progress through the nursery. This is reflected in the organisation of the learning environments. The staff team ensures that children benefit from plenty of opportunities to be active in the fresh air. Children thoroughly enjoy climbing, jumping and pedalling on tricycles with increasing control. Children readily make independent choices and happily explore the wide range of exciting activities on offer. This helps to raise their confidence in their own abilities.

Staff support children's good behaviour. They generously praise children who show an awareness of the rules and boundaries. Staff interact with children at their level, ensuring that children are actively listening. They sensitively remind children to share and take turns. This is proving highly successful, especially with older children, as they listen to each other's contributions and play cooperatively with their friends.

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

• Leaders and staff plan an appealing environment that promotes children's natural curiosity and problem-solving skills. Children show immense enjoyment as they hold different objects in the low-lighting areas to create shadows. Staff skilfully follow children's preferences. For example, they recognise that some younger children do not like some sensory activities. Consequently, staff plan creative, multi-sensory opportunities to help build children's self-confidence in this area.
• Staff help to expand children's knowledge of the wider world. For example, children remember and speak about the mushrooms they saw growing in the forest. They competently manipulate clay, rolling and flattening it into appropriate mushroom shapes. This also helps to strengthen the small muscles in children's hands in preparation for early writing.
• In general, teaching is good. Staff have a clear understanding of the nursery curriculum. However, at times, staff's implementation of planned group activities does not promote or extend children's learning fully effectively. For example, on occasion, staff do not pay enough attention to helping children build on what they know and can do. This means that, at times, children are not fully supported to extend their learning.
• Staff place a high priority on supporting children to develop their independence. Babies learn to feed themselves, and pre-school children successfully use large spoons to independently serve their food and pour their own drinks of water from jugs. Furthermore, staff encourage toddlers to dress in their waterproof clothing before going outside. They give children plenty of time to succeed. This supports children's positive behaviours and resilience.
• Staff include children in the daily routines to care for the nursery farm animals responsibly. They demonstrate a thorough subject knowledge about chickens and teach children the names of the different feathers. They challenge children's thinking as they encourage children to use water-filled pipettes to find out which feathers are waterproof. These real-life experiences help children to learn new and interesting facts about the farm animals.
• Partnerships with parents are effective. Leaders regularly gather feedback from parents. This helps them organise workshops to support parents. Recently, the workshops have focused on children's sleep patterns. Staff regularly share information with parents about their children's learning and development. This helps to provide continuity in children's care and development.
• Leaders show a commitment to continual improvement. For example, they create a team of experts to mentor new staff and further improve existing staff's knowledge and skills. However, some of these ideas are in their infancy. For example, leaders observe staff's practice and provide feedback to support their professional growth. Despite this, teaching is not of a consistently high standard across the provision, to raise children's learning to even higher levels.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the coaching and mentoring for staff to further develop their skills and enhance the implementation of the curriculum.