The Stables Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy coming to this nursery. They feel welcomed and safe with the caring staff team, who know their needs very well. Children enjoy beautiful views of a dairy farm as they play outdoors. This invokes various 'hooks' for learning opportunities. Children show curiosity as they enjoy observing the cows in their grassy field. They learn new vocabulary as they discuss the animals and the machinery used in the daily routines of the farm. Staff use children's interests to capture opportunities for learning. This helps children to make good progress through an engaging curriculum.

Children gain a wide range of skills in each room that help to prepare them for the next stage of their learning. They begin to talk about their emotions. Staff gently help them resolve any disputes with friends and show respect for each other's feelings. This helps children care for each other. Children build resilience as they identify what it is they are experiencing. Staff support opportunities for children to think, be calm and reflect. For example, children enjoy the sensory area in the corner of a toddler room. They quietly enjoy a story or some interactive yoga, while a light projector immerses and engages them with calming lights and sounds.

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

• Staff have high expectations for all children's learning. They work effectively with other professionals to support any children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff use a variety of strategies that include children in all aspects of the activities and daily life of the nursery. This helps all children to achieve to the best of their ability.
• Children take part in a wealth of activities that encourage them to enjoy using their senses. For example, children mould orange-scented play dough to make cupcakes and explore tapioca 'frogspawn'. They learn to engage with textures that they are unfamiliar with, which leads to extended activities such as early mark making.
• The staff provide a language-rich environment for children. They support communication and language through a range of effective strategies, such as simple signing and picture cards. Children thoroughly enjoy words in songs and stories through the media of music, which a skilled practitioner teaches them daily. As a result, all children, particularly those with SEND or those who are learning English as an additional language, enjoy their interactions with friends.
• Overall, staff use the resources available. Their skilful interactions provide positive adult-directed learning opportunities. However, staff are not fully successful in helping children to explore more varied mathematical concepts, such as measure and number, in their play.
• Children and staff have strong attachments. They find out about each other's lives and families and enjoy sharing their personal photo books with others. Children learn about special days and celebrations that their friends enjoy. At times, however, staff do not make the most of opportunities for children to explore these concepts in the wider world, to promote a better understanding of more unfamiliar people and communities.
• Parents speak positively about the nursery. They are happy with their children's progress and feel that staff keep them well informed. Staff encourage parents to work in partnership through an online profile which outlines what children are learning in the nursery. Parents can continue their children's learning at home and then share this via the two-way communication system.
• The head of the nursery and her staff team are strongly motivated and strive for improvement. They evaluate their provision to provide high-quality learning experiences for all children. The head of the nursery is an excellent role model for other staff. She accurately evaluates the quality of the provision and successfully identifies areas to improve.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance the curriculum for mathematics to provide children with planned and spontaneous opportunities to explore numbers and mathematical concepts while they play
• provide more opportunities for children to develop their understanding of the wider world, with particular relation to learning about people and communities other than their own.