Sandhurst Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily enter the nursery. They talk with staff and play with their friends. Staff make good use of their large indoor environment to provide an engaging curriculum and welcoming area for children to learn in. This learning extends easily into the outdoor environment, where children enjoy building on their physical skills as they climb trees, play in the sand, and ride on bicycles and trikes. Staff encourage children to be curious, experiment, and explore. They use this approach to build on children's interests and help them to develop their skills. For example, children enjoy cutting citrus fruit in half, squeezing out the juice, and seeing how it fizzes when they add bicarbonate of soda. Staff planned this activity to build on children's hand development to support later pencil control.

Staff implement a curriculum that is ambitious for every child. They adapt the planning and their teaching to support each child's individual level of development. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) receive good support from staff. Their development is clearly recorded and used, along with information from parents and other professionals, to seek and/or provide the additional support they need. For example, staff are all learning Makaton to support children's communication and language development.

Children share and take turns well, with staff providing consistent encouragement. When children struggle with this, they receive gentle support and guidance from staff. Children show that they are aware of how to keep themselves and their friends safe. They know to only have one person on the slide at a time, how to dig safely, and why they need to carefully watch for obstacles when they are running around the garden. Children, including those with SEND, are making good progress from their starting points.

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

• The owner/manager is a strong leader who has a well-developed curriculum that enables all children to make the best possible progress and be ready for their next stage of education. She prioritises the well-being of her staff, the children, and parents. Management and the staff work well as a team. They work together, each using their own unique skills to provide activities and experiences that effectively build on children's interests and what they can currently do. Staff are ambitious for all children, particularly those with identified gaps in their learning.
• Management and staff identify that developing children's communication skills is a priority. They provide a language-rich environment and plan activities and support to address gaps in children's communication and social skills. Staff maintain eye contact, listen carefully to the children, and are learning to use signs as they talk with them. Children are now more actively communicating to staff, and the identified gaps in their language and communication development have significantly closed.
• Management and staff place a high priority on promoting children's well-being. After staff identified that children were struggling to express their emotions and self-regulate their feelings, they created an 'emotions area'. Staff discuss how the implementation of this area has positively supported children to learn how to express their feelings in a way that staff can see and talk about. For example, children select the plastic bottle filled with coloured items to reflect the 'Colour Monster' emotion they are feeling. Staff take time to learn about the children and their families. The developing use of 'family books' and photos of those people and animals who are special to children, help staff to reassure children and encourage them to share their life experiences outside of nursery.
• Children develop a good awareness of healthy lifestyles. They enjoy being outside in the fresh air daily and building their physical skills. Children demonstrate a good awareness of the daily routines and what they need to do to prepare for these. Children wash their hands prior to meals, and display their good manners as they sit and socialise with each other and staff during these times. They share their understanding of why they need to wash germs off their hands before they eat.
• Management and staff share a wealth of information with parents about the nursery, what their children have been doing, and their achievements and progress. Parents say that they can see the positive impact that attending the nursery has on their children's learning, particularly in their communication and confidence.
• Teaching is consistently good. Staff provide opportunities for children to think about and share their ideas and collaborate with adults. However, at times, the quieter children's needs get less-prompt support to help them to engage in games with their friends and fully interact in other available activities.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to become more vigilant of quieter children, to enable them to quickly re-engage children in learning experiences when they are unsure or disengage.