Little Explorers Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are at the heart of this nurturing nursery. They are happy and thrive in the well-planned environment, which promotes their emotional well-being and their ongoing learning. Staff thoughtfully plan an array of experiences that intertwines children's individual interests as well as their immediate curiosities. As such, children become engrossed in their play, exploring the many activities on offer. For instance, children delight in exploring real flowers during water play as they mix and create their own potions. Staff are on hand to extend their thinking as children turn their curiosities to what objects float and sink in the water and why. These experiences capture children's immediate fascinations and promote their genuine eagerness to learn. This sets children up for future success.

Staff understand the importance of children feeling secure, valued as individuals and respected. They develop trusting bonds with children and are responsive to their needs. As a result, children seek staff out to share experiences, proudly show their achievements and for reassurance or support when needed. These early relationships support children's self-confidence and sense of belonging as well as their growing resilience.

Staff have high expectations of children's behaviour. They are good role models and are consistent in their approach as they teach children right from wrong. Listening to children is of great importance and, as such, they have a children's committee. Through this, children share their opinions, thoughts and ideas, such as creating their own golden rules. This helps to embed children's own understanding of behavioural expectations.

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

• Leaders, alongside their staff, are dedicated to providing the very best outcomes for children. Together, they have worked hard to address previous weaknesses identified at their last inspection. Leaders place an emphasis on staff's well-being and ensure they receive regular and effective supervision sessions. This supports staff to continually improve their own personal effectiveness. Targeted training is sought to influence staff's practice which, in turn, positively impacts the experience children receive.
• All staff implement an effective and ambitious curriculum. This is well planned and offers children meaningful learning across all seven areas of the early years foundations stage. Staff plan bespoke activities and play experiences to continually build on what individual children know and can do. They know what they want to teach children next and why. This supports all children to grow, learn and achieve positively, as they make their own individual progress.
• Generally, children's language and communication skills are well promoted through the high-quality and thoughtful interactions they receive from attentive staff. They expose children to a variety of new words in context to support their learning, such as 'hydrate, petal' and 'sour'. This supports children's ever-growing range of vocabulary. However, on some occasions, younger children or those who are less confident than others, do not always receive the same level of interaction. Despite this, all children make good progress in their communication and language development.
• Staff promote children's good health through an abundance of opportunities. For instance, they ensure children have access to regular physical exercise. Fresh drinking water stations are readily available, which children access independently. In addition, staff model positive hygiene and self-care routines. There are wonderful opportunities for all children to participate in cookery club. For instance, staff support children to prepare their own home-cooked lunch. Children safely cut raw potatoes to make chips, make their own breadcrumb batter to cover their cod and pick home-grown herbs from their garden as they create the sauce. Staff support children to explore a range of ingredients in their raw form and learn about where food comes from. These experiences provoke children's inquisitiveness about foods and ultimately teaches them healthy lifestyles.
• Generally, the routine of the day is well planned and meets children's emotional and learning needs. However, leaders have not addressed some minor inconsistencies during some larger transitional times of the daily routine, such as before lunchtime. During this time, staff are undertaking other tasks, which some children support. This impacts other children's engagement in larger group time as some children are distracted, which hinders their engagement and begins to affect their behaviour. Despite this, overall, children's engagement is very good.
• Staff support children's early mathematical skills well. There are many opportunities for children to learn about numbers and other mathematical concepts throughout the daily routine and activities. For instance, children learn about halves and quarters as they prepare their lunch. Staff support children to count, recognise and begin to write numbers. This prepares children for their next stage in learning well.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Leaders and staff work hard to support good communication with parents about all aspects. They assess and evaluate this regularly, making positive changes and enhancing their effectiveness.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen staff interactions even further to support all children to receive consistently high-quality interactions, to fully promote their communication and language skills and reach their highest potential
• review the organisation of some daily routines, particularly larger transitional times, to help all children remain fully engaged in their learning.