Woodlands Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at this welcoming setting excited and ready to learn. They greet staff warmly and display strong emotional well-being. Babies show positive relationships with key staff, raising their arms for a cuddle as they arrive. Toddlers and pre-school children bound into the room and are full of energy from the start. Children show a positive attitude to learning ,and staff ensure that the curriculum offered reflects their interests and enables them to make the progress they are capable of.

Children behave well. They are helped to share and take turns through staff's positive and gentle interactions. When pre-school children squabble over whose turn it is to play with the wooden truck, staff remind them to use the sand timer in order to have 'their turn next'. Children listen and comply. Staff guide babies and toddlers to behave appropriately through positive role modelling. Children have good communication and language skills, which are supported well by the staff team. Staff ensure that they provide children with a language-rich environment. They read stories, sing rhymes, talk to them and with them as they play.

Staff consistently help children to gain confidence in their abilities. Children develop good levels of independence and a can-do attitude. Babies who are learning to walk confidently crawl up small ramps, and climb in and out of tyres. Toddlers carefully transport mud and sand from one area to another. Pre-school children use knives safely to cut up real vegetables in the home corner. Children love being outdoors and staff ensure that, no matter what the weather, children of all ages can play outside.

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

• The leadership team, manager and staff have worked tirelessly to make the necessary changes that have had a huge impact on the provision. They all have high ambitions for what children can do and this is reflective in the good progress children make. Overall, the manager and staff deliver the curriculum effectively to encourage children's development and understand how to sequence children's learning to help them progress. However, sometimes, children with special educational needs and/or disabilities are not always challenged as much as others, particularly when their key worker is absent from the setting.
• Staff use assessment well, to plan children's learning. They use children's interests to plan appropriate and challenging next steps.
• The new manager is enthusiastic and passionate about her new role. She ensures that every child is treated as a unique individual and able to make the best progress they are capable of. She monitors staff practice and offers regular supervision and support to ensure that the quality of education is strong. Training needs are identified and help to improve staff practice. For example, recent mathematical training has helped staff in the pre-school support children with a broader understanding of number, rather than just counting.
• A particular strength of this setting is the access children have to the outdoors. They have free-flow access to the outdoors as well as regular access to the forest school. Consequently, children have good physical skills and have confidence to try new things. Babies test their physical capabilities as they climb onto a rocking horse unaided by staff. Toddlers begin to use wheeled toys with growing success and pre-school children use water to make the 'mud slide' wet, to allow them to slip and slide down it.
• Pre-school children enjoy hunting for bugs in the forest school area. They use magnifying glasses and are helped by staff to search for bugs. Staff ask the children where they think the bugs are hiding. Children know this is in 'dark' and 'damp' places. They hunt under logs and under tarpaulin. Children show extreme delight as they find a red spider, carefully collecting this and placing in a magnifying beaker to look at more closely.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents spoken with comment on the positive changes that have taken place since the last inspection. They state they feel very much included in what goes on in the setting. Parents know who their child's key worker is and have opportunities to discuss their learning and progress ,both verbally and through a website application. Webinars are offered regularly for parents on such topics as health and the early years foundation stage, to help them be more informed of how children learn and develop.
• Occasionally, in some of the rooms during key times, such as after meals, the atmosphere can be somewhat noisy and chaotic. Staff encourage children to come together for a story or singing session, but children get easily distracted during this time. This can cause disruption and lead to a lack of concentration for some children. As a result, children become confused and unsure of what is expected of them.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consider the needs of every child during forest school activities, particularly those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to ensure every child is challenged and engaged appropriately
• manage transitions more effectively, particularly after meals, to enable children to be able to concentrate and focus their attention more effectively.