Maison Dieu Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy to come into nursery. They are excited to see their key person and their friends. They have cuddles and wave goodbye to parents. Staff hold their hands to guide them in safely. Children know that their favourite toys will be set out waiting for them, such as diggers and cars in the sand and animals to play with. They often seek out their favourite adults to play with them, they smile and laugh and enjoy dancing in their arms. Children also build good peer friendships and thoroughly enjoy engaging in imaginative play. For example, they build houses for princesses and feed leaves to hungry dinosaurs.

Children take part in a range of exciting activities. For instance, they enjoy shaving foam car washes, singing and dancing with musical instruments and role playing favourite stories like 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'. The skilled staff include all children in learning and are good at supporting children who speak English as an additional language to access all activities. The curriculum is carefully planned to build on what children already know and takes into account their current interests. For example, staff use pirate maps and treasure chests to support number and language development.

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

• The manager and staff provide an ambitious curriculum for all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. It is carefully designed around well-structured planning to support each individual child's needs. This helps all children to make good progress across their learning.
• Staff effectively use the garden to promote all areas of learning. Children explore emotions, counting, imaginative play, physical activities and digging. This supports them to embed and strengthen their knowledge.
• Staff speak very clearly and slowly for children who speak English as an additional language. They use visual aids to support their understanding of daily routines. Additionally, they use and repeat simple words, such as 'frog' and 'jump', when exploring familiar songs. This supports children well to build their language skills and deepen their understanding.
• Staff present new information and activities clearly to children and they discuss the new learning well. However, staff do not always fully extend the language for older children effectively. This means children are not consistently benefitting from a rich variety of vocabulary to promote their communication and language development.
• Staff have high expectations of behaviour for all children. They remind children of the rules and teach them how to use things safely. Staff effectively use different behaviour techniques, such as sand timers, to support children to share toys. This helps children to begin to manage their own feelings and behaviour and supports friendships to blossom.
• Children fully engage with activities, listening intently for long periods of time. For example, a large group of children delighted in taking part in using masks and props to role play the story of 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'. This supports children well to explore learning and use their imagination.
• Staff provide a strong key-person system. This supports children to become settled, confident and happy. Staff often cuddle children, hold their hands and sit close to them, offering lots of positive praise for their achievements. This supports children to develop good self-confidence.
• Staff use books and maps well to help children explore other countries and cultures. They also look at diversity and the differences between people's traditions. However, staff do not purposefully explore and plan ways in which they can successfully embrace the heritage and cultural backgrounds of the children attending. This does not fully support all children to understand what makes them unique.
• The manager has a clear and ambitious vision for providing high-quality, inclusive care and education to all. She is skilful at sharing this vision with staff and provides a range of training for them to best support the needs of the children. Through induction, she ensures that even new staff are adept at supporting children well.
• The manager and staff have strong relationships with parents. All parents speak highly of the care and education their children receive, saying they would not send them anywhere else. They feel staff care about children's emotions, settle children well and listen to them. Parents report that the nursery staff feel like extended family.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen staff's ability to more consistently extend and model language for older children to further promote their communication and language development
• improve staff understanding of how to embrace children's cultural backgrounds and how to plan more effectively for this.