Three Four Five Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive excited to this nursery each day. New children settle extremely quickly and form close attachments with staff. Staff skilfully use information from parents and their own observations and assessments to plan the experiences they offer to children. Exceptional staff create a nurturing and inclusive learning environment, which enables children to feel safe and secure. Children demonstrate their confidence and independence on arrival as they hang up their belongings ready for their day. If children struggle to separate from their parents, staff use their excellent knowledge to reassure and distract them to enable them to successfully engage in play. Parents leave knowing that their children settle happily in the nursery.

Children learn eagerly about the natural world around them. For example, they learn how food plants grow by visiting and purchasing seeds from a local garden centre. Staff skilfully support children's growing vocabulary, such as by talking about seedlings and cress in food. Younger children thoroughly enjoy learning about herbs in the garden by smelling and touching them and investigating flowers in a water tray. Children articulate and express themselves extremely well. They constantly use their creativity and imagination. Children joyfully form close friendships with other children and respect different ideas and needs. Older children learn to manage their feelings, and younger children are helped to identify their emotions using images on mats. Staff are positive role models and communicate their expectations for behaviour. Children are polite and well mannered. For example, children remember group rules and share resources outdoors by using a sand timer.

Leaders have created a curriculum that is broad and highly ambitious, with high aspirations for each child's learning. Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in the fascinating environment. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), are exceptionally ready for their next steps in learning, including starting school.

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

• Staff skilfully introduce children to new books and use every opportunity to strengthen children's communication, language and thinking skills. Enthusiastic staff ask pertinent questions that are thought-provoking and stimulate the children to think for themselves. For instance, staff excitedly engage children in interacting in a story, which raises children's attention and entices them to join in with the words and actions. Staff support children to recall previous stories they have heard and can remember. Children are keen to share their knowledge and beam with pride at the praise and encouragement they receive from staff.
• Leaders and staff regularly discuss each child's learning. Through these discussions, they plan for any gaps in children's progress. Staff's professional supervision is highly effective in building the knowledge they need to be experts in promoting children's progression across the curriculum. For example, staff gradually build on children's literacy skills through lots of practise with chalks, paint brushes and manipulating play dough. All of these experiences help to develop children's readiness to write and make marks with meaning.
• Children's achievements are enriched through local visits to afternoon clubs and forest-school activities in the adjoining park. Staff ensure children's safety during such trips. They use creative ideas to enable children's excellent progress in mathematics. For example, older children identify numbers as they wipe them off an outdoor board. Additionally, staff excite children by encouraging them to notice deliberate mistakes and to explain what is wrong. Children use the garden imaginatively and staff respond warmly to their natural curiosity through sensitive and selective interventions. Children have excellent opportunities to develop a variety of physical skills, such as climbing, balancing and jumping.
• Through the nurturing environment, children learn to understand and follow the nursery's routines and expectations. During adult-led activities, children join their groups quickly. They take part enthusiastically with discussions about what they have been learning. Children wait patiently when serving their own snacks. Staff support all children sensitively, helping them to grow in independence.
• Children with SEND receive excellent support from staff. The highly inclusive learning environment helps to close initial gaps in their learning and development. Staff work extensively with parents and other professionals, such as speech and language therapists, which ensures a consistent approach. Staff develop excellent links with local schools to ensure children's successful move to school. For example, school staff visit the nursery to become familiar with transitioning children.
• Partnerships with parents are excellent. Parents are very complimentary about how well informed they are about their children's well-being. The managers and key persons visit children in their homes just before they start at nursery. This helps them to build extensive knowledge of the children, which helps children have a positive start to their nursery experience. Staff start conversations with children about their interests and home life. They incorporate this into the unique curriculum for them and maintain consistency in care routines.