Noah's Ark Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thrive in this highly inclusive, supportive nursery. All staff are warm, welcoming, and provide children with lots of positive praise and care throughout the day. Children feel safe and settle quickly, forming close and nurturing bonds with their key person.

Staff provide exciting activities that encourage children to interact with each other. They share their ideas about how to create an obstacle course, which their friends can join in with. They become excited when they achieve new skills and praise their friends for doing well.

The manager and staff have high expectations for each and every child. They provide a wealth of activities that are carefully planned, to ensure every child is appropriately challenged and making progress. Older children enjoy a range of opportunities to increase their fine motor skills, in readiness for school. They show curiosity when painting with pipettes, demonstrate their imagination using a play dough tinker tray, and enjoy discovering colours and shapes with whiteboard markers. Younger children explore different textures through sensory bags, and spend time making marks in the sand and uncovering bugs with tweezers. Children are well supported to begin to develop a love of learning, and to become independent, resilient and confident.

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

• The manager has a clear intent for the curriculum, which she shares effectively with all staff. The staff team work together to carefully plan a curriculum that provides well-considered next steps, and coherently builds on what children already know and can do. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), are included in all the learning on offer. This supports all children to make good progress.
• Leaders are extremely knowledgeable about how best to support children with SEND. They are quick to identify any needs and address them in a timely, successful manner. They carefully consider the use of funding to support the individual child, such as sensory resources, and apparatus to support physical development. Staff use Makaton signing where appropriate to effectively support children's communication skills, so they feel secure and included.
• Staff support children's mathematical development in activities. For example, staff encourage children to count the pieces of play dough they cut, and identify the colours. Younger children are supported to count the number of conkers they manage to pick up with tweezers. Children show delight in doing this and beam with pride at the praise they receive.
• Staff provide lots of opportunities for children to listen to stories. Some children go to the cosy reading corners and curl up with staff for a chosen story. At other times, staff provide group-reading experiences, with puppets and resources to ignite their interest and love of reading. However, staff do not always consider the best environment or time for this, so children can become distracted by other activities on offer. This means they leave before the story is finished and don't benefit fully from all the learning on offer.
• Staff have strategies in place to support children's understanding of behaviour and conflict management. For example, they provide sand timers for sharing toys. However, staff are not consistent in their use, and their approach to behaviour management. This could become confusing to children at times, and doesn't fully support them to understand taking turns and the impact of their behaviour.
• Leaders have adapted the use of space, to provide children with a room that is focused on physical development. Staff regularly support children to access equipment, such as, slides, obstacle courses and exercise balls. They teach them about risk and safety and allow them the independence, to have a go and explore things for themselves. This helps children to flourish in their physical and personal development.
• The manager is constantly evaluative of the care and education the nursery provides. She regularly observes children and supports staff to identify any areas they could seek to improve. She provides monthly training for staff to provide the best outcomes for children.
• Leaders and staff have very good relationships with parents. Parents are clear who their child's key person is and they value the time staff take to talk with them regularly. Staff share information through an online system, including children's current development and next steps. They help parents to support and extend their child's learning at home. Parents report that 'The patience, professionalism, and care provided is fantastic' and say that they can not fault the staff.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consider the environment for story times, to ensure that distractions are minimised to enable children to fully engage in their learning
• support staff to provide a more consistent approach to behaviour management with younger children, so that they all understand the rules for appropriate behaviour and taking turns.