Rayners Lane Montessori

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff greet children on arrival with big smiles and hugs, to help the, feel settled and safe. As children enter the setting, staff happily chat with parents and children. Children enter eagerly, and staff support anyone who needs extra comfort and time to settle. Staff support children to manage their own behaviour by using timers in their play. This helps them to understand waiting and taking turns. Children quickly engage in planned activities, and the resources staff provide. Babies and children explore and make choices in their learning. Staff skilfully seize several opportunities to enhance children's learning. Babies enjoy rolling balls to each other, and build towers with using construction blocks, while older children delight as they play with balls, hoops and tyres to crate obstacle courses and join in with parachute games. Staff successfully foster children's imaginations through well-planned activities. Children eagerly engage in role play, such as pretending to make sushi with chopsticks and play food, which demonstrates their keen enthusiasm for learning.

The curriculum is ambitious and especially effective for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Leaders prioritise outdoor learning to ensure children are prepared for school and have fun while doing so. They use additional funding well and work with external agencies to provide targeted support. This ensures all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), make good progress and are ready for the next stage of their education.

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

• Leaders and staff effectively gather information from parents about what children already know and can do when they first start. Staff use this to inform their own initial assessments, creating a personalised learning focus for each child. They continuously monitor for any gaps in learning, sharing this information with parents and seeking support from outside agencies when necessary. This proactive approach ensures that any gaps are quickly closed, and that all children make good progress.
• Leaders are clear in their roles and responsibilities. They have effective processes in place for self-evaluation and are aware of where they need to make any improvements. Staff comment that they feel well supported in their work. They have regular opportunities to meet with leaders to review their practice. Leaders set targets and provide high-quality training opportunities to help staff to improve their practice even further. This ensures staff constantly enhance their skills and knowledge.
• Overall, Staff recognise the importance of promoting children's communication and language skills and focus closely on this. Staff model single words and narrate young children's play. While they introduce and expand on new vocabularies, such as 'dissolve and invisible" as older children mix oil, flour and salt and sugar in cups of water. Although, there are some occasions when staff do not give children time to formulate a response to the questions they ask. This means some children do not have the opportunity to fully engage in conversations and share their knowledge.
• Staff identify opportunities effectively to introduce mathematics during children's daily experiences and play. Babies are exposed to numbers in the environment and during singing. Staff effectively use everyday activities to promote mathematical understanding. For example, during an ice-breaking activity, toddlers demonstrate early problem-solving and critical thinking skills as staff encourage them to use a range of words, such as "big" and "small," "heavy" and "light," as they use different tools to release small plastic animals from a frozen blocks of ice.
• Staff support children to learn to manage their emotions and read stories linked to managing their different feelings. This supports children to regulate their emotions well. Staff frequently offer praise, which helps children to develop their self-confidence and self-esteem well.
• While staff generally support children's independence, there are times when they do not consistently reinforce children's self-care skills. For example, children are not consistently given appropriate utensils during mealtimes, and staff do not always help them with key hygiene routines, such as managing a runny nose, which does not support their understanding of personal health and independence.
• The nursery supports children to develop a deep understanding about similarities and differences between themselves and others. Children are proud of who they are and their unique backgrounds. They learn about cultures, festivals and celebrations that are important to themselves and others. Children talk about what makes them unique and discuss differences being positive. Children are prepared for life in modern Britain.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to recognise when to give children more time to express their knowledge, think through ideas and respond to questions asked
• develop staff practice further to help children learn how to manage all aspects of their personal hygiene consistently well.