Blueberry Nursery School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The inspirational leadership team and dedicated staff work tirelessly to ensure all children reach their full potential.

They go above and beyond to include all children and families and create an exceptionally welcoming, loving and nurturing environment. Children of all ages feel incredibly happy, safe and secure and explore the thrilling nursery setting with remarkable confidence. Highly attentive staff get to know children's personalities in great depth through home visits and learn all about children's lives and experiences.

They cherish each child's uniqueness, and children fully celebrate and respect what ...makes them different and the same as their friends and others around them.Leaders and staff have the highest expectations for all children, regardless of their circumstances, and provide an extremely ambitious and dynamic curriculum. They plan an extensive range of exciting and challenging experiences for children to explore, investigate and discover new things.

Pre-school children delight in buying exotic fruits linked to a cultural story they are reading. They enthusiastically discuss their names, such as 'guava', and gleefully remember how they tasted. For example, one child said the fruit was 'sour' and demonstrated how it made him pull a funny face that the others copied hysterically.

Due to the expert support from staff, children rapidly gain the skills needed to flourish in their future learning and school.

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

Leaders are extremely passionate about giving children the rich set of experiences needed to ignite their sense of awe and wonder in the world around them. Children benefit from a diverse set of trips into the local community, such as visiting farms, the seaside and a local retirement home.

Each Christmas, children show great care and consideration for the elderly residents and make them special hampers to enjoy. Children learn about their wider world and community continuously through books, visits from parents and engaging discussions. Throughout the nursery, children spontaneously count in Japanese, sing in Spanish and say hello in Swahili, demonstrating their great interest in the world.

Outdoor learning is given high priority and is meticulously planned and delivered by a trained outdoor play specialist. Children thrive on inspiring experiences, such as forest school sessions in the local woodlands where they investigate wildlife, natural resources and negotiate challenging terrain. These skills and experiences are mirrored in the wonderfully adventurous nursery garden that children of all ages explore exuberantly.

For example, children delight in making 'tea' with crushed herbs and hot water and using pulleys and ropes to transport objects from one side to the other. Children's physical development and awareness of safety and risks are supported exceptionally well outdoors. For instance, children benefit from closely supervised woodwork activities, and they confidently use climbing walls, rope swings and obstacle courses.

Staff are expert practitioners and make full use of their interactions with children to guide and extend children's learning to the highest levels. For example, they encouraged children to make their own train tickets after choosing their destination in the role-play train station. Children copied letters and attempted to write new words, before excitedly discussing their own experiences, such as using the London underground.

Babies delight in exploring books, and staff use these to extend babies' early language extremely well. For example, after children comfortably named the animals in one book, staff got another book with more diverse animals, teaching children their names. Two-year-old children have been learning about space and delight in sharing their excellent knowledge with staff and visitors.

They eagerly pointed to the Earth and Mars in a display of hanging planets and said, 'Astronauts go into space.' Staff are exceptional role models, and children behave remarkably well for their ages. Children are learning the language of feelings and excitedly discuss a story they have read that has taught them about different emotions.

Children confidently know that it is good to talk about how they feel, think about how others might feel and how they can help. Staff support children's healthy lifestyles extremely successfully. Children take part in regular cooking activities focused on healthy recipes that they can continue at home using the nursery cookbooks.

During meals, children impressively know that eating nutritious food gives them 'vitamins' that help them to 'have energy and be fit and healthy'.Leaders support staff exceptionally well in their professional development and ensure they are as happy as they can be in their role. This in turn creates a harmonious atmosphere full of joy, in which children flourish.

Staff benefit from continuous coaching, training and access to further qualifications and are a highly experienced and skilled team.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Safeguarding is given high priority and is at the heart of the nursery's procedures.

The manager and staff have an excellent understanding of how to keep all children safe. Recruitment procedures are highly robust. The manager vigilantly ensures that all staff are suitable for their roles, including on an ongoing basis.

Staff receive extensive training to ensure they know when children might be at risk of harm. They fully understand how to identify any child protection concerns and what action they need to take to report any such concerns. This helps to ensure children are safe and promotes their welfare and well-being fully.