Chalfont St Peter Montessori School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children are inspired by the wide range of natural and real-life resources indoors, and the excitingly presented garden. Staff teach children to question, think, compare, contrast and make decisions, which are important skills for the future.

They provide abundant support for children's emotional and physical development. This means children are extremely well prepared for the next steps in their learning and development and their eventual move to school. The environment is organised to provide children with wonderful experiences and activities, indoors and outdoors, to enthral and excite them in their play.

Chi...ldren are always eager to join in with adult-led activities. Children are incredibly active and benefit from superb opportunities to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle. For example, they take part in planting and growing plants and vegetables.

They grow runner beans from seeds in the nursery garden and then harvest them together, taking immense pride in their achievements. Staff seize every opportunity to expand and extend children's learning. For example, children pop the beans open with knives, count them and identify the difference between dark blue and black.

Children learn to tend to animals' needs. For example, they feed the guinea pigs, handle them gently and have the opportunity to take them home for the weekend. Children show incredibly high levels of respect for their friends and adults.

They shake hands and say 'good morning' as they arrive and greet visitors.

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

Practitioners work exceptionally well with parents and other professionals to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Parent feedback is phenomenal.

They highly praise the staff team and remark on the homely atmosphere their children enjoy. Practitioners' timely and well-considered interventions ensure that any gaps in children's learning are swiftly closed. All children, including those with SEND, make rapid progress in their learning and development.

For example, children who are identified as not progressing well in their speech and language development catch up with their peers within just one term of attending.The quality of teaching is excellent. Staff have a deep understanding of child development and plan inspiring, unique and challenging activities for children.

Staff use children's interests to fully engage them in their play. For example, children's interest in pumpkins led to growing them from seed. This was further extended to develop children's mathematical understanding as they measured and weighed pumpkins of different sizes and shapes.

Staff help to children to build a love of stories and songs and immerse themselves in the activities. Children listen intently to the staff and react with delight as they repeat their favourite parts of familiar stories. Staff use opportunities extremely well to enable children to predict familiar sounds and rhymes and learn about letters and the sounds they make.

The principal and staff encourage parents to take an active role in the setting, such as through the parent teacher association. They meet regularly to fundraise for special events and activities for the children. Children relish the fabulous events such as hatching chicks, watching caterpillars turn to butterflies and releasing them, and enjoy encounters with reptiles.

They go on trips to a forest school setting where they have fantastic opportunities to learn about the environment and the world around them.Staff are very well supported and feel valued in the setting. They are encouraged to gain further knowledge and understanding to support their roles.

Staff retention at the nursery is excellent and they are highly qualified with a wealth of experience. Consequently, staff are motivated to constantly evolve the setting and are highly focused on giving children the best possible start in life.Extremely effective and individually tailored settling-in procedures help children to feel confident and make secure bonds with staff.

Staff consistently talk to children as they play alongside them and support their emotional well-being. Children are extremely happy, self-assured and continually interact with each other and the staff.Children have fabulous opportunities to benefit from extra-curricular activities to broaden their knowledge in areas such as yoga, ballet, rugby and tennis.

Children's individuality is at the heart of the setting. Staff respect each child, their views and their backgrounds. As a result, children are confident and appreciate each other's diversity.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The principal follows extremely robust recruitment and vetting procedures to check the suitability of all staff. Supervisions, appraisals and peer-on-peer observations take place regularly, which help the principal to monitor staff's ongoing suitability and maintain their high-quality teaching skills.

Staff put the welfare of children at the heart of all they do. They have an extremely secure understanding of all aspects of safeguarding and are very confident about the action to take and whom to contact if they have any concerns about a child's welfare. All staff receive appropriate and thorough training to secure their understanding of their roles and responsibilities.