Willow Cottage Nursery (Farmoor)

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children love attending this welcoming, nurturing and calm setting. Staff have worked hard to develop and maintain strong, secure relationships with children and their families. As a result, children quickly separate from their parents or carers and settle well. Children show they have strong bonds with staff as they seek out their familiar adult, to join them in their play or for cuddles when required.

Children benefit from a wide range of activities and really flourish from the wealth of outdoor learning opportunities. Staff use their knowledge about children's interests to plan fun experiences for them. Outside, younger children enjoy painting, digging in the sand or mud and pouring water. Older children splash in puddles, role play in the mud kitchen, create games as they hunt for dinosaurs and take risks negotiating many obstacles. Staff teach children to use mathematical language well and to be confident in counting and recognising shapes in their play. They learn to use appropriate language, such as 'horizontal' and 'vertical'. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are fully included in the setting and are valued by their peers.

Overall, children are becoming confident communicators as they engage in conversations with their friends and staff. Many confident children recall past experiences and are supported by staff to share these events or ideas in their learning. Children show a love of books and enjoy familiar stories. For example, after reading 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea', they pretend to have their own tea party and they delight in pouring water into various containers, adding herbs and herbal teas to give them a wonderful sensory experience.

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

• Leaders are highly reflective of the quality of the care and education provided. They are dedicated to their roles and have clear intentions for children. Staff thread these curriculum goals effectively in what they teach children. Leaders provide staff with a programme of professional development and coaching that gives them clear direction to develop their skills and knowledge. Staff's well-being is given high priority. Staff comment that they feel well supported and the leadership team are open and supportive.
• Leaders and staff are positive role models and know what children need to learn. They create an ambitious curriculum that supports children's curiosity, independence and understanding of the world. As a result, children make good progress in their learning and development. However, although leaders monitor staff practice and help them to continually reflect, on occasion staff's questioning techniques and teaching are not consistently of the highest quality across the provision.
• Babies enjoy stimulating activities and staff support them well. Babies have their own dedicated space and garden. They move freely around, exploring the resources. Staff plan the environment well to enable babies to investigate a range of equipment to support their mobility skills, such as crawling and negotiating small equipment using steps and ramps.
• Children develop their mathematical skills well. For example, they learn to use wooden blocks to learn about number sequencing and shapes. Staff model mathematical language throughout play to help children to consider how many more blocks they will need to match the numerals. This ensures children are developing good knowledge of numbers and shapes.
• Staff provide good support to children in gaining a positive understanding of what makes them unique. Staff encourage children to learn about the similarities and differences of other people. Consequently, children learn to treat each other with respect. Leaders work closely with a wide range of external agencies to further support children with SEND. This ensures that children with SEND are provided with reasonable adjustments and are able to fully access the curriculum.
• Children benefit from healthy snacks and meals. Staff use mealtimes to help develop children's independence skills. Staff guide children as they have a go at pouring their own drinks and serving their own food. Children demonstrate good manners and social skills, as they sit with their friends to eat.
• Staff have developed strong partnerships with parents. Parents are delighted with the care their children receive and appreciate how much time children spend outside. They comment on the progress children make while at the nursery and the strong relationships children have with their key person. Staff share detailed information with parents about children's developmental progress, to support children's learning at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to develop further their already good teaching and embed consistency to enhance modelling of language, effective questioning techniques and further extend children's thinking, problem-solving and communication skills.