Lovacott Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are settled and happy in the welcoming environment created by the caring staff team. They confidently enter the nursery, keen to explore the interesting activities on offer and meet up with their friends.

Children behave very well. They show increasing self-esteem as staff recognise and celebrate each achievement, no matter how small. Younger children beam when staff praise their independent eating skills, while older children revel in giving staff 'high fives' when they successfully solve problems.

Children benefit from a carefully planned curriculum, with a strong and successfully delivered focus on speaking and listening. They confidently learn signs as part of early communication skills and delight in rich music and singing sessions. Children develop a wide vocabulary, which they use with increasing skill to share their thoughts and ideas. Staff continually extend this. They carefully plan and introduce new words from the 'word wall', and model language skills appropriate to each child's stage of development.

Children become highly involved in their play because staff skilfully enable children to be independent while providing considered support to extend learning experiences. Children are making good progress in all areas of learning.

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

• Passionate leaders create a clear vision for high-quality learning experiences for all children. With carefully matched support, the team work well together to meet individual children's needs.
• Training is carefully targeted to help staff build their knowledge and to consistently improve the quality of teaching. Following training on mathematical development, staff skilfully weave opportunities for children to count and solve simple problems into daily activities. With staff support, younger children are beginning to count the number of spoons of flour they need to make play dough while older children successfully work out how many more toes they have than a dinosaur.
• Staff provide a balanced curriculum that covers all areas of learning and successfully incorporates children's individual interests. Careful sequencing of the individual aspirations set out for each child enables all children to build on what they already know and to develop new skills. Children are well prepared for the next steps in their learning.
• Most of the time, staff work well alongside children to maximise learning experiences. They ask open-ended questions and then give children plenty of time to think and work out the answers. They remind children of prior experiences and encourage them to draw on this knowledge to help them work through current problems. For example, when children excitedly make predictions about which items will float or sink, staff remind them of previous similar experiences. With this support, children competently summarise that heavy items sink and lighter items float.
• Children show good levels of concentration as they join in fun and exciting group activities, such as music sessions and story time. However, group times do not always fully meet the needs of the youngest children. For example, some story time discussions are too challenging for the youngest children to fully understand and join in.
• Children benefit from the clear focus on developing healthy lifestyles. They enjoy a wide range of fruit and healthy drinks for snack time. They learn about the importance of exercise and the effect it has on their body, while taking part in exercise sessions and 'penalty shoot outs' in the garden.
• Staff successfully support children to learn to manage their own behaviour. They use stories and activities to identify and talk about feelings, which supports children to begin to use and understand the language of emotions. Children grow in confidence as staff recognise their kind behaviours and praise their actions. Children learn to share and take turns from a very young age.
• Very strong partnerships are in place with parents and the local school. Both school staff and parents speak highly of the nursery team and the children's experience of nursery. The consistent sharing of information between all parties results in high levels of continuity in children's care and ongoing education.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• continue to monitor and work with the staff team so that all staff members consistently maximise learning opportunities
• adapt group activities to enable all children, particularly the youngest to join in and contribute.