Teddies On A Rainbow

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are placed at the heart of this highly inclusive and welcoming nursery. They arrive with big smiles on their faces and settle immediately into exploring the wide range of experiences and opportunities available to them. Leaders and staff are ambitious for all children to reach their highest potential, and relationships between children and staff are warm and collaborative. Staff have an in-depth understanding of children's needs, interests and abilities, and children make outstanding progress from their individual starting points. All children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and children who receive additional funding, make excellent progress in their learning and development.

High value is placed on supporting children's communication and language skills. Children take part in a 'walk and talk' session every day in the local park, where staff use the local environment to inspire children's communication. Children speak clearly and informatively to reflect staff's excellent language modelling. This demonstrates impressive improvements in communication for all children. Children display exceptionally high levels of respect for those around them. For example, when there are not enough seats at a table, staff ask children what they should do and encourage them to solve problems. Children rise to this challenge and find solutions for themselves.

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

• The provider, who is also the manager, has developed an exceptionally strong and long-standing staff team. They work in unison to provide the best care and education for children. Children's interests and happiness are at the heart of everything they do. The manager is an excellent role model for all staff. She has passed on her expert knowledge, enabling staff to provide an ambitious curriculum, which means all children make excellent progress in their learning and development.
• Staff skilfully facilitate children's play and know when to build on what children already know and can do. For example, when exploring and mixing their own slime, children select different ingredients to add. They delight in the different textures, use words such as 'dry', 'wet' and 'sticky' to describe how the ingredients feel and choose what they are going to add next. Staff step in and encourage children to plan ahead for the next texture they would like to accomplish, and children embrace this challenge. This nurtures children's creative skills and means that children are excited and motivated to challenge themselves.
• Children's behaviour is exemplary, and staff are excellent role models. Children show high levels of self-control and consistently try hard to achieve their goals. When children struggle with this, staff take highly effective action in order to support children's emotional well-being. Staff skilfully help children to understand why something is not working and to find a solution for themselves. This supports children's self-regulation skills and encourages them to begin to solve problems for themselves.
• Children demonstrate great confidence as they move around the nursery. When making group choices, staff present children with opportunities to vote. These opportunities might arise when choosing coloured sand in the light box or when deciding which way to go in the park. Staff proficiently help children to cast their vote and then decide on which route to proceed. As a result, children learn to respectfully accept the winning vote, even if it is not their choice.
• Partnerships with parents are outstanding. Parents cannot rate the nursery highly enough and describe it as fantastic, highly supportive and always there to help. They feel extremely well informed of their children's progress and relish the opportunity to look through progress folders each half term when they are sent home. Parents remark on the fantastic settling-in process. They are reassured that their child's happiness is paramount when they are offered as many settling-in sessions as their child needs before starting full time.
• Staff well-being is prioritised, and the manager is invested in their professional development. During supervision meetings, they carefully identify training courses to raise staff's already excellent practice. One staff member recently completed training on working with boys. This has strengthened their knowledge and impacted well on how boys are supported and provided for at the nursery.