Wivenhoe Park Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Confident, strong and extremely keen little learners enter the nursery with ease. They part from their parents and carers and are affectionately greeted by staff who have an in-depth knowledge of their individual likes, dislikes and needs. Children are superbly behaved.

They show high levels of respect for each other and for their environment. Children articulate their feelings and needs proficiently. They share lively conversations with their friends, especially in the role-play areas and when they regularly visit the forest school.

Children who learn best in an outdoor environment have extensive opportunities ...to explore in the nursery's exceptionally vibrant and exciting gardens. For example, they swing from a rope, negotiate mounds and hills, balance on a range of different surfaces and use the extensive range of natural resources in their play. Children learn about where food comes from when they plant and tend fruit and vegetables in the on-site nursery allotment area.

They explore nature and wildlife when they visit the wildlife garden. All children make exceptionally good progress from their starting points, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those who speak English as an additional language. Their learning needs are superbly assessed and planned for by extremely highly skilled and confident staff.

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

Children play, learn and explore in a vibrant and stimulating environment. Staff are inventive in the way in which they present resources and activities to help to capture and engage children's interests. For example, tins and packets of real food, as well as fresh vegetables, are used in the role-play areas.

Children are provided with the ingredients to make their own play dough as and when they choose to. Children pump water into the large sand areas with hand pumps.Staff make excellent use of the local area and university campus to enhance and extend children's learning.

For example, they go for daily walks in the grounds to explore the wildlife and take a minibus to the local town to visit the library. When new students arrive to study at the university at the beginning of term, children write welcome notes, which they give to them.Partnerships with parents are excellent.

Parents are encouraged to play an extremely active role in their child's nursery life. Staff have superb methods of communicating with parents on a daily basis, including through effective parents' meetings and evenings. Parents spoken to and those who provided written comments state that they are extremely happy with the nursery and feel that their children receive exemplary care and attention to detail.

Budding artists are provided with excellent opportunities to develop their creative talents and express themselves through art and design. Children visit the 'Art Studio' in small groups and work with a professional artist to explore a range of different mediums and artistic styles. For example, children's interest in the swirly pattern on snail's shells recently led to them researching and interpreting the work of famous artists.

Dynamic and extremely enthusiastic staff lead the forest school. Children visit different areas of woodland and open spaces around the nursery on a daily basis. They learn how to take risks and are provided with exceptional opportunities to learn outdoors.

For example, they make bird nests from mud and twigs. They create mud faces on the side of trees and negotiate rope bridges. Children have opportunities to learn how to use real tools to make models and to saw and cut wood.

Children are extremely excited by these sessions and speak enthusiastically about the things they enjoy doing.Staff in the highly skilled management team work exceptionally well together. They each have very different and defined roles, which helps them to focus on specific aspects of nursery management.

The management team supports staff superbly. Staff receive regular supervision meetings. They are awarded prizes for achievements at the annual awards ceremony and are able to access an extensive range of training opportunities.

Staff talk about being part of 'one big family'.Children who learn English as an additional language are expertly supported. Their various languages are valued.

For example, staff learn how to greet parents in their home language. There are dual-language books in each of the rooms and the nursery has produced leaflets containing information about local amenities for families who are new to the area.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Managers and staff are extremely knowledgeable about their responsibilities with regards to safeguarding children. All managers and staff receive and complete regular safeguarding training to help to improve their already exemplary knowledge. In-house training events are used to highlight specific aspects of safeguarding.

Staff are provided with opportunities to thoroughly research particular aspects of child protection that interest them. The providers carry out rigorous recruitment procedures to help to ensure that all adults working at the nursery are suitable to do so. New staff complete an in-depth induction to help them to understand the nursery's policies and procedures, including safeguarding.