The Warren Nursery & Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children thrive in this extremely nurturing, supportive and exciting nursery. They very quickly form warm and meaningful relationships with staff, which supports them to feel safe, settled and ready to learn. Babies are often seen intently watching their key person, smiling and responding to them with enthusiasm. Staff engage older children in exciting and in-depth conversations about their new learning. This supports all children to make exceptional progress.

Children are taught from when they are babies to be kind and gentle with each other and to share resources. They watch and learn from each other and enjoy interactions across the nursery. Older children thoroughly enjoy showing their peers what they have found out, such as what is inside a melon. They shriek with excitement and giggle as they tell each other what the seeds look, feel and smell like.

Staff know all children exceptionally well, and work together and with parents to provide a fun and stimulating curriculum based around the children's interests. Children are always seen to be fully engrossed in a huge variety of exciting activities. Younger children enjoy exploring different textures, sounds, and rhymes, while older children explore deeper learning about volcanos and animals. All children are extremely well supported to listen, take part and learn, increasing their independence and resilience, and fostering a love of learning. This supports children superbly to move on to the next stage of their learning.

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

• Staff provide a highly ambitious, broad and rich curriculum for all children. It is clearly sequenced, planned and delivered to help children build on prior knowledge, deepen their understanding and rapidly acquire new language. Older children talk about volcanos 'erupting' and making 'hot lava', while they enjoy using paper mache to make their own volcanos. Babies explore sensory bottles to look at sounds, colours and 'bigger' and 'smaller' sizes.
• Staff make every effort to use funding to include children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) in all learning opportunities. For example, they purchase specialist outdoor equipment to promote activities that develop mobility skills. This means children with SEND do not miss out on any fun or learning, and make the best progress they can.
• Staff effortlessly present learning in a fun, engaging way. They expertly use questioning and allow children to explore for themselves, providing them with a greater understanding and improving problem-solving skills. For example, children work as a team to see which objects will be best to collect water and how many more legs they need to make play-dough animals.
• Staff encourage a true love of reading in all children. They provide a number of cosy areas, where children regularly go to curl up with staff and enjoy a story. Staff read with animated voices that engage and interest children. They help children to understand the stories through questioning and looking at the pictures. This supports communication and language highly effectively, and prepares children superbly for future learning.
• Staff are highly successful at supporting children to explore a variety of cultures. They regularly help all children to make food from different countries and then to sample it at snack time. Parents contribute by translating stories into their home languages. This supports all children to understand differences and similarities, and feel pride in sharing their uniqueness with others.
• Staff continually support children to think about emotional regulation. They provide a wealth of stories and activities to develop this. Older children are supported to talk about characters' feelings and behaviours in stories, and younger children use picture cards to explore feelings. This means children become very capable at understanding emotions and recognising their own feelings.
• Leaders are exceptional at providing focused and highly effective professional development for staff. They complete many observations and provide lots of support and training, such as in sign language so staff can support children with hearing impairments to understand and take part in all learning. This ensures that the care and education staff deliver to children is of an outstanding quality and rapidly aids their progress.
• Leaders place high priority on their staff's well-being. They consistently reward and recognise achievements, meaning that staff morale is high. Staff feel valued and empowered to provide the best possible care to children.
• Parents are included in every part of their child's learning journey. They contribute to their goals and achievements. This helps to provide an excellent continuity of learning for every child. Parents say that their children are 'stimulated and challenged consistently,' and 'thrive under the care' of staff who 'love, cherish and value every child'.