Orchard Early Years

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff at this unique and nurturing nursery help children to settle quickly by providing them with personalised settling-in sessions. Children develop strong attachments to their key person and other staff in the nursery. This supports children's emotional well-being and a sense of belonging.

The management and staff work together to create a unique and ambitious curriculum that focuses on the individual starting points of children. The curriculum promotes key skills for children to develop as they progress through their nursery journey. For instance, by the time children leave the nursery, they are able to follow a recipe when baking. Babies start by exploring textures with their hands and mixing ingredients. Older children take part in regular cooking activities where staff teach them how to follow a recipe. Children recognise and name numbers as staff point to the list of ingredients.

Staff are positive role models. They communicate with each other with care, kindness and compassion. Children behave well and learn to share with their friends with the guidance of the caring staff. Staff and children role play together. Children explore their imaginations, practising different voices as they play with dolls. They join in with activities for extended periods of time, demonstrating a positive attitude to learning.

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

• Children are immersed in a communication-rich environment. Staff get down to children's level and promote positive eye contact as they communicate with them. Children develop their language and vocabulary through repetition of the nursery core books. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) join in with the repeated refrains of familiar stories. As a result of this, children develop a love of books and increase their language skills.
• Staff celebrate children's unique achievements and share these with families. They use their excellent knowledge of children's development and interests to plan inviting activities that promote awe and wonder. Babies explore paint with their hands and create vertical lines using chalk on the blackboard. Older children are highly focused as they make play dough. They explore the scent of lavender and use scissors to cut petals into their mixture. However, staff do not always differentiate their teaching to ensure that they offer consistent stretch and challenge to most-able children.
• Children attending this caring nursery receive dedicated care routines that support their health and well-being. Staff provide children with calming massage sessions before sleep time, and explain to children that they are relaxing their muscles to help them sleep. Children respond positively to this and settle quickly in the tranquil sleep room. Staff promote healthy eating by providing a well-balanced menu that includes an abundance of seasonal vegetables. Babies and older children feed themselves with confidence.
• The nursery team is passionate about creating a family ethos within the nursery, where families are supported and are partners in their child's education. Families are welcomed into the nursery each morning and parents are invited into the rooms for personal handovers with their child's key person. Parents are grateful for the welcoming environment that they say helps their child to flourish socially and emotionally.
• Staff and management have put appropriate systems in place to ensure that children are safe. They teach children how to keep themselves safe through exploration and learning to manage their own risks. For example, children build their own obstacle courses with natural resources that they find in the environment. Staff observe and support them by holding their hand as they climb and balance on what they have made. Older children develop their fine motor skills as they cut up potatoes to make potato soup in the outdoor kitchen.
• Staff feel supported and valued. They receive an effective induction period that provides them with an appropriate understanding of the policies and procedures of the nursery. Staff have a secure knowledge of their safeguarding responsibilities. They receive regular supervision from the dedicated manager. However, this does not yet consistently focus on improvements to teaching. This means that staff are not fully aware of their professional development needs and how they can improve.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to consider how to extend learning opportunities to fully challenge the most able children
• strengthen supervision systems to monitor staff teaching practice, and support staff to identify areas for professional development that enable them to raise the quality of their practice even further.