Apple Tree Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The management team has made inspirational changes to benefit all children. It provides a well-organised curriculum that focuses on key areas of development, where children engage in fulfilling experiences and gain essential knowledge that they may not experience outside of nursery.

The curriculum incorporates key values, including learning through play, exploring the outside world, healthy and nutritious diets and embracing the world we live in. The curriculum is carefully organised to ensure all children become confident learners from the start, with the support of their nurturing key person. Children build strong conn...ections, feel safe and seek comfort when they need to.

Staff carefully observe children and track their development to ensure they are meeting their milestones.Children are developing their communication and language skills excellently. They speak clearly and informatively to reflect the staff's excellent language modelling.

Children aged as young as two years follow instructions, such as to tidy up, with quick and effective listening skills. Staff are supporting communication with babies, and children who find speech difficult, by learning sign language. This has demonstrated impressive improvements in communication for all children.

Staff provide a fully inclusive environment. Children learn some simple words in other languages. This means they communicate well with their friends who learn English as an additional language.

Children have a deep understanding of how to keep their bodies healthy. For example, they grow their own vegetables to understand their growth and how to prepare them for eating. The inspirational management team invites a nutritionist to visit the children.

Children carry out fun, food-related activities to deepen their understanding of how nutritious food supports them to grow healthily. This is supported by visits from dentists and examples of how to brush teeth properly. This helps children to understand which foods promote good dental care and which damage teeth.

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

Children are extremely engaged in all age groups. Babies explore sensory equipment with quiet, calm focus. Toddler-aged children enjoy exploring sand, gently being reminded by staff not to throw it.

Pre-school children explore the resources available and make their way around the activity stations, inside and outside of the setting. All children are happy and confident to engage with their peers and share equipment exceptionally well. Children are extremely busy as they investigate their thoughts and ideas.

For example, pre-school children decided to pour water down some drainpipes. They confidently used their initiative to collect water in buckets from the outside tap. They carried buckets of water across the garden, poured them down the pipes and squealed in delight.

They made puddles on the ground and excitedly jumped up and down to splash in the water.Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities have an exceptional support network around them. A special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) works directly with the children in the setting's engaging sensory room.

The exceptionally nurturing SENCo has built a trusting relationship with the children to enhance their sense of belonging and build their confidence to learn and reach their expected milestones. The SENCo carries out detailed assessments of the children and creates engaging activities to ensure children make incredible progress. For example, she plays an interactive speech and sound game where children listen and guess what might be in the bucket, supporting children to think, challenge themselves and use sounds and words to develop their key targets.

The SENCo liaises extremely well with parents, key people, management and outside agencies to ensure all children are receiving exceptional support in their well-being and development.The inspirational leaders and managers continually motivate staff to progress their own development. Staff complete the annual required training and choose their own learning pathway to enhance their early years skills.

This ensures they are continually improving and acquiring new knowledge to support children's development.Staff and leaders have developed a positive community spirit to enhance the children's sense of belonging in their local area. The staff make use of a six-seater pushchair for babies to enjoy outings.

Staff use the community as a learning tool for children as they often visit the library, parks and nature reserves. Children are safely involved in the local litter picking service to understand the importance of taking care of their planet. Visitors, such as police officers, come into the setting with the important aim of children developing an understanding that they are trusted people.

Staff and children embrace the celebrations of various cultures and religious events, embedding a deep and meaningful respect for the diversity of all people. Parents visit the setting to discuss their culture with the children and share stories and cultural resources to give children an insight into the differences in the way people live. Parents are very welcome into the setting to discuss their occupations and give children an additional view of diversity in families.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.All staff have developed excellent knowledge of how to safeguard children. They are trained to a high standard to acknowledge the signs and symptoms of a child potentially being at risk of harm.

Staff have the professionalism to act appropriately when dealing with safeguarding concerns. They know who to report to if they have concerns for the safety of children and understand the whistle-blowing policy to report concerns involving a colleague. Confidential reports are stored securely, with a clear system to ensure children are not at further risk of harm.

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