The Cheshire Day Nursery @ Thelwall

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff provide consistent encouragement and praise for children. Children's behaviour is exemplary. Staff support children to have high levels of confidence in social situations. Children are happy, highly motivated and very keen to join in. Children talk about their emotions demonstrating a high level of understanding about what emotions mean and what might influence how they are feeling. They talk about tornados making them feel angry and roller coasters making them feel scared. This helps children be ready for their next stage of learning as they develop understanding and control over the way they might feel.

There are exceptionally high expectations for all children. Staff plan a highly effective sequenced educational programme for all areas of children's learning and focus very closely on any small areas children need to improve on. This helps children to make excellent progress in their learning and development. Children have positive attitudes towards learning. At mealtimes, younger children feed themselves, toddlers competently drink from open cups and older children select their own plates and cutlery and serve their own food. This helps children to be fully efficient in undertaking tasks for themselves and managing their health and self-care needs.

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

• The leadership team have an excellent knowledge of how children learn and develop. They use this superb knowledge to plan an exceptional curriculum. Staff have a deep understanding of what they want children to achieve and implement the curriculum in a focused and effective way. Children are intrigued, curious and coherently build their knowledge over time.
• The setting places a strong emphasis on enabling children to make excellent progress in developing their communication and language skills. They consistently introduce new language to children of all ages, undertake specialist communication assessments and narrate while children are playing. Children talk extensively about the things that are important to them and use language to explain their thinking and ideas.
• Staff organise the learning environment in a way that effectively engages children in deep learning. Indoors and outdoors children have opportunities to re-visit knowledge and skills they have already gained and to use them in a range of contexts refining and building upon what they already know. This helps children to be secure in the knowledge and skills they have. Children engage in play for extended periods of time, are motivated and demonstrate a 'can do' attitude.
• Staff provide a range of superb experiences that support children to develop their physical skills and to learn about keeping themselves safe. Children climb ladders to access the pretend pirate ship, they use scissors to cut things out and roast marshmallows over a fire. This helps children to be highly skilful in using their large and small physical skills and they have an excellent knowledge of the things they need to do to help stay safe.
• Staff benefit from effective and highly focused support so that they can continuously improve their practice. Staff observe expert colleagues model the very best teaching, which helps staff to ensure that their interactions with children are of very high quality. Staff are highly effective teachers who support children to achieve the best outcomes.
• Partnerships with parents are very strong. Staff spend a lot of time getting to know families well. Parents come into the nursery and teach the children about their background. Parents read stories in Welsh and show children the Chinese traditions and parents talk to children about the range of jobs that they have, such as pilots and bee keepers. Staff send home activity ideas that are very closely aligned to what children need to learn next. This helps children have a strong sense of belonging in the setting and a fully consistent approach to meeting their needs.
• Staff support children to show high levels of respect for each other. Staff effectively and consistently role model the use of manners to children. When children pretend to make soup outdoors, staff talk with children about sharing the soup with each other and comment on the good choices children make. Children are polite, courteous and know how to interact with each other.
• Staff implement excellent teaching to help children learn about the world around them. Older children learn about space. Children role play being astronauts, make planets and read stories about what space is like. This helps children to comment and ask questions about the world in which they live.