Priesthills Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children are extremely eager to learn in this nurturing and homely nursery. They are greeted warmly at the door by their key person.

Children explore the welcoming environment and engage in intriguing activities which are supported by extremely knowledgeable and inspiring staff. Children develop their physical skills in the garden. They sit on small sledges and slide down the hill in delight.

Enthusiastic staff give children the opportunity to estimate who will be the fastest and test out theories. This encourages children to develop their problem-solving skills. Children display consistently high levels of invo...lvement.

Remembering stories they have previously listened to, they build magical carriages with bricks. The children use complex mathematical language to compare sizes. This helps them to build a solid foundation in mathematics.

Children are deeply engaged during group times. They show consistently high levels of respect for others. Children join in an activity and take it in turn to use descriptive words about their shoes.

They speak with increasing confidence and fluency. This develops children's language and social skills. Staff provide a nurturing and calm home-like experience for babies, who form exceptionally secure attachments to their key person.

Staff meaningfully engage with babies as they explore baskets with familiar items in. Staff consistently extend babies' knowledge by repeating words and building sentences. Babies shake musical instruments joyfully as staff sing songs with actions that they copy.

As a result of this, babies rapidly develop early language and listening skills.

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

The dedicated manager is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about providing high-quality care and education. She leads her inspirational team exceptionally well, using regular supervisions to devise highly focused objectives for staff's professional development.

This benefits the children as they have exceptionally high-quality interactions with the staff during play.The manager ensures that staff and children's welfare is given the highest priority. During COVID-19 pandemic, care and support were offered to the staff team and the families who attend the setting.

The staff team kept in regular contact with the families. Children were given home learning tasks during the pandemic for families to enjoy at home. This ensured that all families had high-quality nursery experiences at home.

Staff provide a wonderful broad curriculum that ignites wonder and curiosity for children. For example, children mix potions, scooping out the seeds of a pomegranate. Staff skilfully build on past experiences of the children, comparing this to the tadpoles they have in the pre-school.

This provokes highly effective conversations.Staff are exceptional at supporting children's language skills. They reinforce language spoken and introduce new words for children to experiment with.

Staff encourage children to listen to the sounds of musical instruments. They use highly effective techniques to encourage children to talk about the sounds they hear. As a result of this, children speak with increasingly fluency.

Staff adopt consistent strategies to support children's understanding of expected behaviour. Staff use what they know about each child to manage their behaviour. As a result of this, behaviour is exemplary.

Children are polite and courteous to each other and to visitors at the setting.Staff have an exceptional knowledge of how to support children who speak English as an additional language. They find out about and use words in the language children use at home, helping children to feel valued.

Parents whose first language is not English send in videos of them speaking in their own language. Staff then use these to understand and use some of the key words to the children. This builds on what the children already know and enables them to communicate extremely effectively.

Staff engage in playful interactions with children. Staff and children then create fascinating storylines and scenarios together, such as getting ready to go to a party. Children develop a deep level of imagination during play.

The manager holds regular consultations with parents. They positively share their views. The nursery manager uses the information to continuously improve the environment and the experiences of the families that use the setting.

The children in pre-school have formed a committee. They meet once a term where they discuss what they would like to have in their rooms. Highly responsive staff create inspiring areas in the rooms based on these discussions.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The management team has robust systems in place to ensure that staff are suitable to work with children. Staff demonstrate good knowledge of how to identify if a child may be at risk and how to protect children from harm.

They know about the reporting procedure in place and how to report any concerns about a child in their care. The management and staff ensure that all risks in nursery are minimised. The nursery is safe and secure, and the management team and staff identify and minimise potential risks indoors and outdoors successfully.

Also at this postcode