Rainbow Corner Loseley Fields

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Friendly staff lovingly greet children as they arrive. Children are delighted to see them and eager to begin their busy day ahead. Staff interact with children in caring, gentle and nurturing ways, which helps foster a calm and supportive atmosphere. Well-established key-person arrangements enable children to form strong, trusting relationships with those staff that know them best. From the outset, staff gather valuable information from parents about care routines and developmental needs. They prioritise children's emotional well-being and confidence to help them feel safe and valued. For example, staff collaborate with parents of children who speak English as an additional language to create home-made books featuring key words in their home language and aspects of their culture. Staff use these words to aid these children's understanding and to help them feel welcomed and included.

Children consistently demonstrate positive behaviours and attitudes towards learning. They seek reassurance when needed and thoroughly enjoy playing independently, with friends or alongside staff, who are always on hand to support children. Leaders create a well-designed, sequenced curriculum that promotes important values, such as kindness, respect and resilience, in preparation for their eventual move to a new room or school. Staff teach these values in engaging ways. For example, soft toys that represent the different values help children make meaningful connections. Staff also plan an array of enriching sensory experiences, indoors and outdoors, which spark children's interests and curiosities. They encourage exploration and discovery. For instance, staff inspire children to investigate a range of different pumpkins, mixing in crushed leaves and oats to create their own 'pumpkin soup'.

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

• Staff skilfully support children to become competent and effective communicators. In the baby room, staff introduce new words in context. With toddlers, staff respond with interest to children's ideas and experiences. Pre-school children confidently share what they know, such as describing a bagpipe performance they enjoyed. For children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, visual cards are used to help them know the next routine of the day. This helps to promote inclusive practice. Across the nursery, staff nurture children's love for books. Children eagerly sit with staff, indoors or outdoors, to listen to and talk about the stories, which helps extend their vocabulary.
• Outdoor learning is integral to the provision. Each room has a well-resourced, stimulating garden where children develop coordination and motor skills as they climb, balance and navigate different terrains with their wheeled toys. Children happily engage in exciting activities set up by staff, such as when older babies test out different toy cars by rolling them down guttering and helping one another to collect them after. Staff also extend children's understanding of the world by growing fruit and vegetables, including tomatoes and pumpkins.
• Knowledgeable leaders are reflective and continually evaluate practice to enhance the service on offer. Staff report high levels of morale and support, such as in managing smoother transitions in the baby room. Leaders oversee teaching, model expectations and provide individual staff with constructive feedback to improve their skills. However, this is not yet fully embedded or sharply focused enough to raise the quality of teaching to a consistently high standard. At times, some staff's intended learning expectations and delivery of the curriculum do not fully match children's developmental stages. That said, staff who are new to the nursery receive suitable induction programmes to help equip them for their role.
• Staff build positive relationships with parents, and two-way communication is generally effective. For instance, during a 'focus week', key persons share children's progress and suggest activities parents can do at home. However, this is not yet happening on a more regular basis. Leaders recognise there is still more work to do to strengthen the information parents receive about the curriculum on offer. Although in its infancy, there are future plans to invite parents into the setting to see the curriculum in action, to help them further support their children's development.
• The provider notified Ofsted of a breach related to managing children's allergies at mealtimes. This demonstrated that the provider met their legal responsibility to report significant events. Leaders have since reviewed and improved their allergy management procedures, which has been shared with all staff. Ofsted is satisfied with the actions that leaders have taken to address this breach. As a result, Ofsted will not take any further action in relation to this matter.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide more targeted professional development support for all staff to further enhance their knowledge and skills to deliver the curriculum in a more sequenced way that builds progressively on individual children's capabilities
• continue to strengthen partnerships with parents and two-way communication of important information to enable them to better support and extend their children's learning at home.