Stationhouse Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff plan an exciting environment that sparks children's interests and ignites their motivation. Children become extremely inquisitive and engrossed in their learning. For example, toddlers concentrate extremely well on cutting up fruit for a smoothie, such as strawberries and blueberries, persevering and mastering a difficult task. Staff engage children of all ages in developing excellent language and communication skills. For example, they expertly help older children to recall how they made bread dough, and remember the distinctive smell is yeast. Staff pose excellent questions for children to think critically, such as what will happen if they shake the bowl of dough; children make predications and find out it sinks. Staff recast words to help toddlers use correct pronunciations and talk to babies as they babble. Staff are continually providing skilful support to enable all children to make choices and have their voices heard. They rapidly pick up on nonverbal communication and work extremely well with parents to meet children's needs highly successfully. Parents are extremely positive about the provision; all particularly mention their children's amazing key person. They comment they share detailed information, so the staff know their children extremely well. Parents confirm that they were hugely impressed by staff throughout the COVID-19 pandemic; meeting restrictions while providing continuity for children. They comment that the brilliant, nurturing, knowledgeable staff have a highly positive impact on their children's rapid development.

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

• The managers lead a highly passionate and dedicated staff team. They recognise the impact staff welfare can have on the children, so prioritise supporting them in their role. The manager works closely with staff to provide highly successful guidance, which ensures they maintain their very high standards. Her ethos is that if her staff thrive, then children will too.
• Staff have excellent opportunities to extend their knowledge and skills, which has a highly positive affect on children. Several staff are working towards higher qualifications. Training such as 'Separation Anxiety', enables staff to be sensitive and highly responsive to babies' needs. In-house training, such as 'Brilliant Babies', is so successful the local authority has asked them to train practitioners from other early years provisions.
• The management team involves the whole staff team in planning their highly ambitious curriculum. Knowing the skills and knowledge they want children to achieve before going to school, they meticulously plan how to sequence children's learning from babies, through every stage until they reach their goals. This is kept flexible to enable endless possibilities by following children's lead and skilfully facilitating their ideas. Staff implement this extremely successfully, so that children become, highly curious, independent, confident learners, ready for their next challenge in life.
• Staff are skilful at observing what motivates children. They use this information exceptionally well to plan an extensive range of activities, which fascinate children and keep them engrossed in their learning. Staff expertly enable children to extend their curiosity, deepen their concentration, and challenge their learning further. For example, while making play dough, they learn about using a pippete to get food colouring from a bottle; when one falls in, staff skilfully encourage them to think of solutions to the problem. This leads to children finding out if their suggestions work and eventually becomes a colour-mixing activity.
• The highly successful key-person system ensures children feel safe and valued. Staff know the children extremely well, enabling them to meet children's individual needs exceptionally well. As a result, babies who are new to the setting, settle quickly and are soon smiling and giggling. Managers and staff handle transitions to the next room very sensitively, including involving parents, so children feel extremely secure.
• Children's behaviour is exemplary. Staff support them extremely well in dealing with emotions from babies, so that by pre-school they can say how they are feeling, what impact their behaviour has had on others and what they can do to make better decisions. Staff use highly successful strategies to support children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those learning English as an additional language. This empowers them to be included in all aspects of nursery life and all children develop highly positive relationships.
• Children have outstanding opportunities to be outdoors and develop healthy practices. They enjoy home cooked nutritional meals, and after a visit from the dental nurse, the chef revised the menus to cut the sugar content even further. Since the pandemic, they have reinstated their many and varied outings for children in the community, such as visits to the harbour, the beach and shops. They provide a wealth of real experiences to broaden children's learning even more extensively.