Traquinas Childcare

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thrive in this highly engaging and motivating nursery. Staff engagement with all children is extremely positive and warm. This helps children to feel safe, welcomed and loved. Children form close relationships with their peers. They are kind, and their behaviour is extremely positive. They demonstrate high levels of self-esteem and confidence. Children participate in daily yoga sessions, which helps them to develop strength, flexibility and focus. Alongside this, children are introduced to positive affirmations that promote positive thoughts and feelings. This helps them to develop resilience to overcome challenges and remain calm in any conflicts.

Children are extremely well prepared for starting school. They are helped to become independent and develop self-care skills right from starting as a baby. Young children serve themselves food at mealtimes. In pre-school, a self-care station helps children to learn how to care for their personal needs as they blow their own noses, brush their hair and wipe their faces. Older children learn how to be responsible for their own safety. For example, they demonstrate to staff where to safely place their fingers as they chop fruit and vegetables. Children learn about responsibility and develop empathy for living things as they help care for a chicken and turtles, who are very much part of the nursery family.

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

• Staff demonstrate a very strong understanding of child development and how the activities and experiences they provide for children help them to learn and achieve. They are truly passionate about helping children to have the best possible start in life, and children's happiness and welfare are at the heart of everything they do. Through careful sequencing of learning, staff deliver an ambitious curriculum and are consistently building on what children know and can do.
• Teaching is exemplary. Staff listen intently to children and react positively to what children say and do. Staff are knowledgeable and skilled at promoting and extending learning as children play. They respond well to children's emerging interests. For example, when very young children express an interest in trains, they are provided with the experience of travelling on a real train. Children who are learning about the lifecycle of a plant visit the garden centre to find out more facts about plants and buy seeds for planting.
• Leaders highly value the staff who work in the nursery. They utilise their team members' strengths very well and make them feel empowered in their role. Staff morale is high, and they say they feel very well supported in their role. A meaningful ongoing programme of professional development opportunities continually helps staff to build their knowledge and skills in childcare. The impact of this is clearly evidenced through the strong teaching techniques demonstrated by staff and the varied experiences children receive.
• Children are helped to develop a very strong sense of belonging in their local community. Children, including babies, regularly visit the allotments, attend forest school sessions and visit the library and shops. Staff take older children swimming at the local pool to help them become water-confident. Children participate in activities with elderly people at the local care home. Activities such as these also help children to develop their social skills and confidence as they meet and interact with different people in society. They help to broaden children's learning experiences and prepare them well for their future life.
• Staff place a strong emphasis on developing children's communication and language. They communicate clearly and model language effectively. Story and singing sessions are fun and engaging. Children are exposed to rich language as they engage in conversations with staff. The eldest children talk about different reptiles and predators as they wash and brush the nursery turtles and discuss the hexagon shapes they can see on the turtles' backs. Babies and young children confidently use familiar signs to communicate their wants and needs.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and their families receive exemplary support and guidance from staff. Staff have high ambitions for all children in the nursery. They ensure that children are provided with a learning environment that consistently meets their needs. Staff work very closely with parents and other professionals to help develop and nurture children to make the very best progress they can. Strategies such as providing private speech and language therapist sessions help children to receive the support they need in a timely manner.
• Parents speak highly of the setting. They say that staff are kind and supportive, and they particularly appreciate the time their children spend out in the community. Staff provide training for parents that helps to increase their knowledge of different aspects of childcare, such as preparing their children for starting school and e-safety. Parents are very well informed about their children's time in the nursery and their achievements. They spend time in the nursery for different events, such as stay-and-play sessions.