The Lime Tree Children's Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Management and staff provide an inspirational and ambitious curriculum that engages children exceptionally well. Staff provide an enticing environment with plentiful resources and natural materials. They encourage children to freely explore and experiment in a variety of imaginative ways. Staff interact and communicate with the children effectively. They instinctively know when to provide children with extra support, extend their understanding, or step back and let children develop their own learning. Staff sensitively engage with children to enhance their play and learning experiences. Staff model an extensive range of vocabulary. Children consistently hear and practise new words, becoming confident communicators.

Staff are nurturing and caring, and have excellent bonds with children. Staff discuss how enabling children across the nursery to mingle and play together at different times throughout the day benefits them. It helps to strengthen children's social skills, allows them to build bonds with staff from other rooms, and supports siblings to see and play with each other. Children display excellent behaviour and are keen to help staff and each other. They eagerly choose their daily helper role and proudly share what their responsibility is with adults and their friends.

Children thrive and are making rapid progress in their learning and development. Staff know the children exceptionally well. All staff take great pride in celebrating children's achievements, such as when they start walking or become potty trained. Staff's praise boosts children's confidence and self-esteem. Children are eager to try new things and have a 'can-do' attitude. They fully engross themselves in activities, whether making dough gingerbread men, sorting seeds and pulses, or exploring for mini-beasts. Staff extend children's knowledge and skills exceptionally well. They encourage children to problem-solve and critically think as they interact and ask questions. For example, staff ask children to name different parts of an ant, and recall how many legs different insects have and which insect has more.

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

• Management and staff are extremely passionate about providing high-quality care and education. They have initiated several measures to support the children and their parents. For example, to support parents and children through new experiences and emotional change, staff have created bespoke resource packs that parents can take home. 'Buddy bags' focus on providing resources that parents can use at home to support their children's learning and emotional well-being. For example, they include support for children dealing with grief or trauma, to manage their feelings, interactions during nappy changing, and preparing children for the dentist, vaccinations or medical appointments. 'Activity bags' focus on areas of learning such as literacy, understanding the world, maths, and the transition to school.
• Staff work exceptionally well as a team, and seamlessly deploy themselves to best support children's learning. They skilfully interact with children as they play, and use their knowledge to continually extend what children know and can do. For example, where babies are beginning to move, staff encourage them to manoeuvre over more objects and cruise around. Older children are encouraged to share and recall their experiences, predict and problem-solve. They assess risks themselves, such as when using different containers to carry water to clean equipment, or when negotiating their self-made obstacle courses.
• Staff receive regular supervision and complete a variety of training. They say that they greatly enjoy working with the children, and show they are reflective on their roles and how these can develop or be improved. Children's well-being is important to staff, and management are in the process of implementing new initiatives to extend what they offer to staff. Staff are excellent role models and reinforce the positive behaviour that children display.
• Children learn about and lead healthy lifestyles. They enjoy healthy meals, and discuss why they need to drink water and the importance of good hygiene. Children greatly enjoy being in the fresh air and say that they could play outside all day. Children imaginatively use natural resources and cooperate with each other to manoeuvre planks, logs and tyres to make vehicles, become pirates, or make their own see-saws. Staff encourage children's creativity and bring the different areas of learning into these occasions to meaningfully extend children's experiences and skills.
• Management and staff work swiftly with parents and other professionals when they identify children's emerging needs. Children benefit from the highly effective partnerships in place with local children's centres, schools, and local authority advisers. The special educational needs coordinator has created a comprehensive speech and language programme, which enables staff to swiftly implement bespoke support for children. Children's communication and social skills, along with learning to self-regulate emotions, are a focus since the COVID- 19 pandemic.
• Partnerships with parents are excellent. Parents are highly complimentary of the care provided to their children and the progress they make. They describe the staff as 'inspirational', 'creative' and 'caring'. They also comment on the great communication, and say that they feel lucky to be a part of this exceptional nursery. Staff encourage parents to share their expertise. Parents come to the nursery to read stories to children or share cultural festivals and traditions.
• Children learn about other cultures and their local community. Children enjoy outings into the local community, sports day in the local school grounds, and participating in activities that increase their awareness of what makes them unique. There are bilingual resources, and parents receive encouragement to share their backgrounds so that staff can authentically incorporate them in activities.