Westleigh Nursery Ltd.

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily to this warm, welcoming, homely, and very inclusive nursery. Staff create a wonderful and relaxing environment for all children. Children, including those who have been identified as requiring extra support are thriving and enjoying new experiences. Staff understand how each child is unique and how they learn in different ways. Children benefit immensely from an extremely well-planned curriculum. They are curious, want to explore and are very motivated to learn. Children of all ages demonstrate superb concentration during their play and learning.

Older children work very well together as they confidently and safely use small tools. They use mallets to hit the logs and tell visitors they are building a house together, they comment 'it's going to be a tree house'. Toddlers safely and skilfully manoeuvre trikes around tracks. They take great care not to bump into their friends. There is a great sense of friendship and kindness in the nursery. For example, older children comfort their friends when they have tripped over saying 'you alright?'. Staff are excellent role models for children. Children's behaviour is exemplary.

Children benefit from the strong focus placed on supporting their communication and language development. Babies begin to learn familiar songs and action rhymes, that staff skilfully introduce them to. Staff clearly and carefully repeat words and sounds with babies. Toddlers show a great understanding of using words to express their needs. Older children use a wide range of vocabulary, as they hold in-depth and complex conversations with staff.

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

• The support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is excellent. Management, including the special educational needs coordinator, have a thorough overview of the work that is required to ensure these and all other children's needs are met. All staff understand the importance of working with external agencies and other professionals involved with each child. As a result, children make superb progress in their learning and development.
• The management team have excellent knowledge and skills. They have a very secure understanding of how to support staff and ensure that an ambitious curriculum is consistently sustained. They use thorough ways of monitoring and coaching the staff team. This means all children achieve as much as they can through impressive and precise learning intentions.
• All children's attitude to their learning is exemplary. Babies relish their time outside exploring the different resources, and begin to learn how to play with other children. Older children initiate their own games, such as hide and seek, ball and bucket games, and being 'archaeologists' as they pretend to find dinosaur bones. They eagerly encourage staff and visitors to join in with them. All children are very happy and settled. They quickly learn about taking turns and sharing toys in a harmonious way.
• All staff are superb at making sure they use as many opportunities as possible to build on children's interests to support their learning. Staff skilfully engage and interact with children. They quickly adapt their teaching skills to match and support how children best learn through different play and experiences. While waiting to go back inside, staff encourage children to choose names of animals beginning with the first letter of the visitors' names. Children come up with Jaguar for 'J' and Porcupine for 'P', and excitedly share these with the visitors.
• Children's mathematical language and problem-solving development are skilfully woven into their play and experiences, by the staff. When a ball gets stuck on the low roof, older children negotiate and work together to come up with solutions to try and get the ball down. Once they have agreed, a staff member follows their suggestion, and the ball is retrieved. Children are absolutely delighted and are very proud of their success, as they clap and cheer together.
• All children build very secure attachments with staff. Young babies who have recently started attending the nursery are settling in extremely well. Staff are nurturing, kind and sensitive. When babies wake up from their sleep, staff gently introduce them back into their play. Older children really enjoy the company of staff and laugh and have fun with them. When staff test and challenge children's knowledge of counting numbers, staff deliberately miss out numbers. Children quickly respond saying 'you need to re-charge your batteries'. Counting is resumed in the correct sequence by all the children.
• Partnerships with parents is excellent. Parents' comments are extremely positive about how supportive the staff are. They comment on how well staff keep them up to date with the slightest of changes and new information, including the changes to how play is planned to support their children's interests and development.