The Little Lane Nursery - Easton On The Hill

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thrive in this nurturing and welcoming environment. They show their delight at being in the nursery as they eagerly separate from parents and rush to be with their friends. Staff greet children with beaming smiles and a cheery welcome. This demonstrates children feel safe and secure.

The environment children play in is unique and awe-inspiring. They access a superb range of activities and resources, which they explore with curiosity and wonder, using all their senses. For example, babies explore different 'treasure' in the colours of red and white, to represent England in the Euro football tournament. Toddlers spend a long time experimenting with an eye-catching selection of space related items, such as 'moon rocks', glitter, mud, hammers and spoons. They use their fine motor skills to hammer the rocks and use spoons to dig in the mud to seek out aliens.

Pre-school children relish the opportunity and freedom to develop their climbing and sliding skills in the mud in the forest school area. They have respect for each other and listen to adults. For example, they show a good understanding of how to follow the rules and cooperate with one another, such as when balancing on tree stumps.

Children make good progress in their learning and development, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). This is because staff have high expectations of what they can achieve. One example of this is that children who have SEND are fully included in all curriculum activities.

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

• The manager values the staff at the nursery and the important work they do with the children. She always considers staff well-being. Staff reflect this in the high praise they have for the manager and providers. They say the manager's door is always open, they know they can speak to them anytime. They also comment they cannot speak highly enough about the manager's and providers' support.
• The well-qualified staff show a genuine enthusiasm and passion for their work with children. Overall, they support children's learning well. They make ongoing assessments of children's achievements and understand their developmental needs and interests.
• Across the nursery, staff offer children activities that excite them and support deep involvement and concentration. Dough play is popular. Babies explore red and white dough with tools and toddlers investigate a plethora of herbs and mix them into dough. As a result, their curiosity is ignited, and they display high levels of engagement.
• Staff give children high levels of support in their emotional development. They build strong bonds with their key children. This is especially evident in the baby room, where babies snuggle into staff and run into their arms when they return to the room after a short period away.
• Staff help children to develop an excellent awareness of their immediate community. For example, they make regular visits into the local village. Children and staff chat to residents, who greet them and ask after their welfare. This contributes to children's developing social skills. Furthermore, the staff take children on trips beyond the village on a mini-bus. This helps to broaden children's horizons even further afield.
• Staff place a strong focus on developing children's communication and language. Consequently, children become skilful communicators. They engage in discussions and articulate their ideas and experiences in great detail, for example, children recall family holidays and talk about their time away.
• Staff nurture children's independence skills from an early age. They encourage toddlers' belief in their own abilities, for example, staff provide reassurance to them as they attempt to put on their own shoes. Children respond with pleasure to the very genuine praise they receive when staff celebrate these achievements.
• Partnerships with parents are exceptional. Parents offer the highest praise for the nursery. They comment on the excellent progress their children have made and the good feedback they receive from staff. Parents comment that they genuinely feel they are very lucky to have found the nursery.
• Staff receive informal one-to-one meetings to support their professional development and well-being. However, the monitoring of staff performance does not yet focus fully on identifying and sharing ways for staff to further develop the quality of their teaching practice to a higher level.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the arrangements for the supervision, coaching and mentoring of staff to help raise the quality of teaching to a higher level.