Mini Miracles Montessori

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their time at nursery. Staff know children well and organise an enabling and stimulating learning environment for them. Children eagerly explore the environment and can easily select the toys which they want to use from low-level shelves. Children have warm and affectionate attachments with staff and demonstrate that they feel emotionally secure.

Leaders recognise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and prioritise areas of the curriculum well. Staff focus on what children know and can do. They use this knowledge to build children's interests and to extend their learning. Staff generally use their observations well to assess and plan for individual children's learning and progress, including those who may have emerging additional needs. Babies practise their emerging physical skills from crawling to walking. Toddlers transition from nappies to becoming toilet trained. Pre-school children develop their self-help and care skills as they practise taking off and putting on their coats and shoes. Staff support children's communication and language well, including those children who speak English as an additional language. Children enjoy singing nursery rhymes and sharing books, which gives them rich opportunities to understand new words.

Staff generally model a consistent approach to managing children's behaviour. Children behave very well and have good attitudes to their learning. For example, they listen to instructions when it is time to tidy up. Staff help children to understand about taking turns and to share toys from an early age. These essential skills are well embedded by the time children reach pre-school age.

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

• Leaders work hard and with their local authority's early years team to help evaluate their strengths and areas to further develop. They demonstrate their commitment to providing the best possible care and education for all children. Children benefit from a broad curriculum that supports them to make good progress from their starting points and develop the skills which they need for future learning.
• Leaders implement regular monitoring and coaching systems to support staff's practice. Although peer observations take place to assess the quality of staff's teaching practice, the leaders overview of this is not fully secure. This occasionally has a minor impact on the quality of education. For example, staff do not continuously prioritise children's quality interactions during mealtimes.
• Staff support children's communication and language through a variety of ways. They ask questions and provide a running commentary of children's play. Staff give children sufficient time to think and respond as they interact with them.
• Staff provide guided teaching to children through group times. As part of these group circle times, children learn to anticipate and practise patience. They develop their concentration and listening skills. Pre-school children learn early mathematical skills. They count from zero to five, and practise working out how many wooden sticks they need to place them against the correct numeral. Older children learn about simple addition and subtraction.
• Staff skilfully adapt effective strategies to keep children focused during activities. Children show that they are confident to approach their familiar adults for help. Staff support and interact with children warmly, giving them lots of hugs and cuddles along the way. Children are very well behaved. They recognise and are familiar with their routines. Children follow learned rules and boundaries well, which are embedded by staff.
• Staff promote children's awareness and understanding about health and hygiene through their daily routines, such as handwashing before meals and after using the toilet. Children enjoy practising how to brush their teeth and staff teach them about the importance of oral health.
• Parents comment positively about the nursery. They say that staff are friendly and approachable. Parents share that their children enjoy going to nursery and that they get information and photos using an online application, which keeps them well informed about their child's day. However, leaders are not yet welcoming parents into the setting to fully enhance children's settling-in experiences, since the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have been lifted.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff to understand what they are expected to teach children during all activities
• strengthen partnerships with parents to support children's care, learning and progress even further.