Chiltern Hills Montessori

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children feel safe and secure at nursery.

They benefit from flexible settling-in arrangements. These help them to become familiar with their new environment and build relationships with their key person. For example, children are eager for staff to greet them and take them to activities they enjoy, such as mark making and exploring.

Children adjust to sleeping arrangements in nursery. They settle quickly as they listen to gentle music playing, with their key person sat beside them.Children are confident and happy learners.

They smile and giggle as they splash and play outdoors in the water tray. They concentra...te well as they fill watering cans and pour water carefully into planting pots. Children enjoy their activities.

They say that they like singing nursery rhymes, making cakes and playing in the sand. Children thoroughly enjoy the range of activities that staff plan for them. They learn to be brave, taking risks and enjoying the fresh air at forest school activities.

Children benefit from high expectations from staff. For instance, they learn to sit with others and take turns in group activities, which promotes their developing language. They listen and respond well.

They use their voices and body actions to accompany rhymes and chants. Children are well prepared for the next stage in their learning.

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

Managers have high expectations.

They place high priority on the importance of having well-trained staff. For example, staff benefit from regular professional development opportunities. Managers encourage them to complete additional qualifications.

They ensure that staff have time to complete duties associated with their role. This supports their work-life balance well.Staff develop positive partnerships with parents from the outset.

For example, they talk to them at the earliest opportunity to find out about their children's care and learning needs. Managers communicate with parents regularly. They consider how to reach all parents, such as by communicating using a variety of different methods.

Children demonstrate consistently positive attitudes to their learning. They develop a range of skills, which help them to become independent. For instance, children learn to tidy up after mealtimes.

They develop their hand muscles, eagerly squeezing and spraying water onto tables and using sponges to wipe them. Children take pride in their achievements. They have beaming smiles when staff thank them for their help.

Children learn to manage their own personal hygiene effectively. For example, they follow staff instructions carefully, learning how to wipe their nose. They create songs together to help them to remember how to brush their teeth.

Managers fully include all children in nursery. They seek advice and support from specialists, such as speech and language therapists, in a timely manner. This helps staff to put support strategies in place and enables all children, including those with additional needs, to make good progress.

Managers have high expectations for developing children's communication. Children listen attentively to stories each day. Staff positively promote opportunities for children to communicate in their home language, such as by singing nursery rhymes in different languages.

Managers help parents to further support this focus. For instance, they arrange family trips to the local library and help parents to register to borrow books for their own children.Staff know their key children well.

They talk confidently about what they want children to learn. However, on occasion, staff do not fully consider the sequence of knowledge that they want to teach during planned activities. This means that some aspects of the curriculum are not delivered as effectively as they could be.

The manager ensures that the nursery meets the requirement to provide parents with a short written summary of each child's development between the ages of two and three. However, within these, staff include large numbers of targets. They generate these on the nursery electronic tracking system and do not review them.

This means that parents do not have an accurate understanding of the most important things that their children need to learn next.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Managers follow robust procedures to ensure that staff are suitable for their roles.

Staff are aware of how to respond to any potential concern about staff practice. They demonstrate a secure understanding of signs and symptoms of abuse, which may indicate children are at risk of harm. They are familiar with local safeguarding partnership thresholds for referring concerns about children's welfare.

Managers ensure that staff complete regular child protection training. They help staff keep their knowledge up to date by dedicating staff meeting time to discussing policies, procedures and local authority updates.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: strengthen staff support, helping them to focus planning on the sequence of skills and knowledge they want children to learn in their activities review the two year progress check and reduce the number of targets reported to parents, to give a more accurate picture about what children need to learn next.