The Willow Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The manager and staff provide children with an abundance of exciting, purposeful learning experiences that captivate their interests and inspire a love of learning. All children fully embrace the opportunities to play and learn in a highly organised, safe environment. Children are totally equipped with the skills they need in readiness for school. Older children demonstrate high levels of learning during their independent play. They have clear aims, negotiate and solve problems as they play harmoniously with their friends. Children form extremely close bonds with staff.

The manager and staff continuously monitor and review the curriculum on offer to ensure that it accurately reflects the current learning needs of each child. Staff understand how to motivate children to learn. They skilfully use information from parents, observations and assessment to shape the experiences they offer. Children show real excitement as they share their views of painting a wall, saying, 'it is a construction that needs painting'. All children make excellent progress.

Staff have high expectations for all children. They place strong focus on supporting children's emotions, which helps them to understand how they are feeling. Children are fully aware of the impact their own behaviour has on others and they are consistently respectful. They play collaboratively and value each other's opinions. For example, older children listen to each other as they agree who should place the next block at the top as they build a tower in the garden. Children are thoughtful and kind. Some children offer a place in the line to others while they wait for their turn to use the climbing frame. Children's behaviour is exceptional.

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

• The inspirational manager continually evaluates the quality of the provision. She asks parents for their feedback and uses children's interests and staff views to continually improve. She has a clear vision and accurate oversight of the quality of practice and education provided. The manager provides staff with targeted training and feedback on their practice. This ensures excellent quality across the nursery.
• Staff skilfully use their expert knowledge and understanding of the children to provide them with bespoke learning that precisely matches their needs. They complete meticulous assessments of children's learning when they start. Staff complete the progress check for children aged between two and three years. The curriculum is accessible to all children, ensuring that they make excellent progress in their learning.
• Staff's interactions with children significantly promote children's communication and language skills. This is consistently implemented throughout the nursery. Staff make excellent use of conversations, books and rhymes in small groups to develop and extend children's use of language. For example, during story time about emotions, staff explain what the word 'angry' means, to help older children understand. They introduce a range of words, such as 'phew', and ask children questions about the pictures, allowing children time to respond. Children demonstrate excellent conversational skills.
• Younger children's love of books is captivated by short stories that are appropriate for their ages and stages of learning and development. They join in songs and music, which instigate an understanding of rhythm and beats, encouraging the children to express themselves. Staff provide children who speak English as an additional language with excellent support, so that they can confidently interact and make excellent progress.
• Staff provide children with clear routines, which successfully guides children and help them to understand what is expected of them. The deployment of staff is excellent. They are consistent with their key children. They make gentle interventions to help younger children who are new to the setting to understand what to do.
• Staff support children to develop a positive attitude to mathematics. Children demonstrate their knowledge that they have been taught about numbers. Older children talk about how much water they need, such as 'enough', 'first' and a 'little more' as they measure how much they need. They very confidently count up to 10. Staff provide enjoyable experiences that help children to understand amounts and match these to numbers.
• Children develop superb personal hygiene routines, including dental health. They show tremendous levels of independence and self-care skills. Children find their smock with their name on arrival, which they put on by themselves, and competently use a knife and fork at mealtime. Children know to tidy up when they have finished playing. These experiences strengthen children's self-confidence.
• Parents are delighted with the service provided by the staff. They report that staff gather a range of information about their children when they start and provide regular communication about their child's learning, as well as ideas to support their children at home. Parents value staff attentiveness and that they fully understand their children's needs. They highly praise the exceptional partnership with parents and careers.