Maple Montessori Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a happy, welcoming and nurturing learning environment. They have high expectations for children's learning and behaviour and plan an ambitious curriculum and wide range of stimulating activities that children enthusiastically enjoy. Children show high levels of emotional well-being and develop positive attitudes towards learning. Staff are positive role models. They actively join in with children's play and learning and give lots of encouragement. Staff effectively promote children's good behaviour. For instance, they give them clear messages about kindness and sharing and help them to wait for their turn. This helps children to behave well.

Staff have clear intentions for children's learning and create a learning environment that successfully supports children's independence and natural desire to learn. Younger children have good fun exploring resources connected to 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' story. They eagerly discuss different foods, days of the week and how caterpillars transform into butterflies. Children show good interest in the story. Older children show high engagement when listening to the story 'Handa's Surprise'. Many children demonstrate strong prior knowledge and discuss how the story is set in Africa. Staff effectively introduce new words, such as 'savannah' and 'climate'. This challenges older children's knowledge and understanding of the world extremely well. Children show that they feel happy and safe. It is evident that they have good bonds with the friendly staff and enjoy their time at the nursery.

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

• Staff have worked hard to address the action and recommendations raised at their previous inspection. Staff have engaged in additional behaviour management training to help to strengthen their skills and knowledge. Staff are reflective and committed to continuing to enhance different aspects of the environment and their practice.
• Staff provide children with a rich and exciting curriculum that offers a good balance of child-led and adult-led activities. Staff know individual children extremely well and carefully plan activities based on children's interests and what they need to learn next. Staff use meaningful interactions well, overall, to support children to move forward in their learning.
• Staff effectively support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those who speak English as an additional language. For instance, staff work closely with other early years professionals, such as speech and language therapists, to provide children with tailored support. This helps children to receive good levels of consistency and supports their future learning.
• Staff place strong emphasis on supporting children to develop a positive view of themselves. Children are highly inquisitive and behave very well. They are eager to join in and show respect for their environment and each other.
• Staff effectively help children to lead active and healthy lifestyles. For example, children benefit from daily walks or visits to the local park. Furthermore, they participate in a weekly dance class. This helps to develop their physical skills and improves their overall health and well-being.
• Staff foster children's curiosity well. Staff working with older children are highly skilled at asking children effective questions and encouraging children to develop their own thinking skills. Staff working with younger children offer good commentary as they play. However, on occasion, they do not maximise all opportunities that arise to extend younger children's language skills and knowledge to the very highest level.
• Staff naturally build children's self-esteem as they play. This is apparent when staff play a range of games with children to get them talking and to boost their confidence. Staff have identified the importance of continuing to encourage quieter children to contribute their ideas to the group. They are developing different strategies to support all children's active participation.
• Staff form positive relationships with parents. Parents comment that they feel well involved in their children's learning and receive daily updates about their day. They add that they also receive more detailed information about their children's new achievements and development during termly meetings. Parents highly value how kind and caring staff are and express that their children are making very good progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• continue to strengthen staff working with younger children to extend their language development and learning to the very highest level.