The Spring Montessori

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy attending the setting and arrive happy and ready to begin their learning. Staff know children well and plan appropriate and meaningful next steps to support children's good progress. Staff deploy themselves across the classroom and engage in play alongside children, extending their language and vocabulary. Children enjoy a range of different activities and demonstrate good concentration skills when an activity interests them. Staff encourage children to keep trying and they have a positive attitude to their learning.

Outdoors, children thoroughly enjoy the mud kitchen. Staff provide numerous resources that support children's engagement, social skills and mathematical development. For example, children follow the recipe cards that are displayed. They find and count different ingredients and work as a team to ensure the correct mixture is made. Children demonstrate good behaviours and social interactions as they play alongside their peers. Staff praise children for their achievements. They add written notes to the 'achievement tree' to celebrate children's progress and success. This helps children to feel valued.

The management team is passionate about providing children with a wide variety of experiences. For example, children enjoy meeting new people when they visit the setting and take part in different activity groups and classes such as football and sign language. Children help to look after the settings pets, learning how to care for animals and visit different religious buildings and places in the community to learn more about others.

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

• Children are provided with a vast range of learning opportunities to develop their understanding about the world. Boxes for each of the continents are displayed on shelves and children enjoy exploring the contents. They discuss the different items in each box and talk about the different weathers, lands and animals from around the world. Additionally, children compare the world map and globe, developing their understanding that the world is round and there are many different places that people live. This extends even further as children learn about different festivals, traditions and religious events from around the world.
• Children demonstrate their love of reading as they sit quietly looking at books independently. They also enjoy listening to staff read, talking about the pictures they can see and staff extend other areas of knowledge such as mathematical terms and language. Additionally, children make their own books, working as a team to make up a story. Staff use this information to create children's individual stories. Children are very proud of their achievements and enjoy reading and reflecting on these experiences.
• Overall, children develop good listening skills and begin to engage in adult-led group games well. However, staff are not always consistent with their expectations or the boundaries they put in place at the setting. This impacts on children's understanding of the rules.
• Children enjoy regular time outdoors and staff provide a vast range of opportunities to extend children's physical development. However, daily routines and transitions can, at times, be disorganised and this can impact on children's engagement and behaviours. For example, children become distracted, and staff do not always maximise learning opportunities.
• Staff work closely with other professionals to support families and children alike. They share relevant information, attend regular meetings and ensure good communication to prioritise children's safety and well-being. Transitions to school are well-supported. Staff share relevant information with teachers and visits are accommodated to help children feel familiar with new adults.
• The management team hold regular staff meetings and supervision. They discuss staff practice, strengths and weaknesses and well-being. Staff talk about the excellent support they receive at the setting. They thoroughly enjoy their roles and feel extremely valued by the management team.
• The management team has now implemented strong methods of communication that ensure parents are kept up to date and well-informed about their children's care and learning. Parents receive daily updates, as well as face-to-face meetings to discuss more in-depth information. Home-learning opportunities are shared regularly and provide continuity in children's learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide children with clear and consistent boundaries to help them understand what is right and wrong
• improve the organisation of daily routines to ensure all opportunities are used for learning and support positive behaviours and engagement.