Little Green Rascals Poppleton

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The atmosphere in the nursery is extremely friendly, and children show a real joy for learning and clearly love their nursery. Staff and children treat each other kindly and with a high degree of respect. From the moment they enter, they are active learners, exploring their ideas and interests with great enthusiasm. Children grow in confidence and their personal development is outstanding. They have a strong voice, and their views and opinions are highly valued. Through their 'children's council', older children decide what they would like to do or any changes they want to make in the nursery. For example, they wanted more opportunities to play with the toddlers and the babies, which staff now factor into their planning.

Visitors to the nursery help to enrich children's experience, discover their talents and develop important physical and personal skills. For example, children expertly use their feet to weave the football between cones. This helps them to develop a great sense of balance and coordination. Children become incredibly excited when invited to play the drums. They carefully follow the speed, experimenting with sound, beat and rhythm. Older children recognise written numbers, matching them accurately to the correct number of objects, and ordering their dinosaurs and other animals by size and shape.

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

• The success of the nursery is firmly rooted in the superb leadership of the management. They have created a hardworking team who are united in their aim to provide the highest-quality education in an atmosphere where everyone feels happy, valued, cared for and respected. They are all, together, totally committed to the children's success, happiness and safety. Staff well-being is prioritised, as are their skills as early years professionals.
• Teaching and learning are excellent because staff carefully plan experiences which take children's learning forward from whatever level they have reached previously. They involve structured or play activities which are stimulating and enjoyable, involve children fully in their own learning, and develop very positive attitudes. Children become skilled in working with one another as well as developing a high level of independence, readily selecting equipment for themselves, and learning through investigation. This means that all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those in receipt of funding, receive the precise support that they need to make outstanding progress.
• Staff promote children's literacy skills exceptionally well. This starts with staff sharing books with babies, while toddlers get a superb introduction through listening to sounds, rhyme and repetition. This gradual progression then enables older children to start to blend the sounds they have learned. During a phonics session, one child explained that 'p-a-t is "pat"', which rhymes with '"mat", m-a-t'. Children are having so much fun they do not realise that staffs' incisive questioning challenges them to really think and work hard.
• Staff seize every opportunity to develop children's ideas by playing and exploring alongside them and using questions and comments to extend their thinking. For instance, after seeing a photograph of a dome-shaped house, a child decides he would like to recreate this. Staff ably support him to think about how he could do this and the resources he needs. This leads to him drawing his design on paper, thinking about the shape of the blocks he needs to achieve the dome shape, and learning new vocabulary, such as architect. Children's ability to follow through their ideas and to sustain their involvement in a task they have decided to undertake is remarkable for their age.
• Well-trained staff expertly promote children's positive behaviour. They are consistent in their approaches to help children regulate their emotions and manage their behaviour. Staff positively acknowledge how children are feeling and assist them to develop the language that helps them to talk about their emotions.
• Parents and carers capture the essence of the nursery very successfully in their highly complimentary comments, such as 'I will always be grateful to them for the start in life that they have given to our children. They are kind, caring and fantastically knowledgeable', and 'staff are outstanding role models who put the children at the centre of all that they do.' A plethora of information, including workshops for parents, help them to develop their awareness of subjects, such as mathematics, and equip them with the skills to support their children's learning at home.