Crickets Montessori Nursery School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children have very high self-esteem and are extremely motivated learners. Staff take great care to learn about children's individual preferences. They build strong, caring relationships with children and value them highly.

For instance, staff place a great importance on greeting each child individually with smiles when they arrive and when they leave the nursery. Children are exceptionally capable of doing things for themselves. For example, even the youngest children can put on their coats and shoes, and help to prepare fruit snacks.

Children have an excellent awareness of safety. For instance, they check the g...arden with staff to identify any hazards, such as slippery, wet leaves and sweep them up. Children tuck chairs under tables when they leave.

They handle a wide range of tools and delicate materials with great care and caution. Staff have high expectations of children and manage children's behaviour very successfully. For example, children make excellent attempts at trying to resolve differences between each other.

Older children remind younger ones of group rules.

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

Staff offer a very rich and exciting range of activities. They make thorough and comprehensive observations of children, which they make excellent use of to ensure that children are highly challenged.

Children make exceptional progress. Staff monitor children's progress robustly and provide excellent support to those children needing extra help.Staff support children's understanding of the natural world in exceptional ways.

For example, they take children on a nature hunt in the garden, where they use binoculars made by the children to spot different birds. Children match the bird to pictures in non-fiction books and staff teach them names of different kinds of birds.Staff teach children excellent early literacy skills.

For example, even younger children have an excellent knowledge of letters and the sounds they make, and many older children are able to read simple words. Children have a great love of books and often retell stories in the correct sequence.Children have very good understanding of their feelings and how to manage them.

Staff use creatively inspired ideas to support children in this area. For instance, children draw faces with different emotions on sand-filled balloons or use emotion puppets to tell stories about feelings. Children have an excellent understanding of and respect for people from different religious or cultural backgrounds.

For example, they make costumes and masks to pretend to be in a parade at a South American festival.Children develop a wide range of excellent physical skills. For instance, they take part in Montessori activities, such as transferring rice grains very skilfully from one small container to another.

Children use tongs to pick up and place small objects in containers, which helps to develop their exceptional small-muscle control. Children have excellent opportunities to practise a variety of physical skills, such as climbing, balancing and jumping. They take part in organised group games to help them to aim, throw and catch balls.

Staff work with parents in highly effective ways. They ensure that parents are kept very well informed of their children's progress, using flexible and successful approaches. For example, staff provide contact books, daily verbal feedback and parents' meetings.

They offer parents excellent opportunities to support their children's progress, such as home-learning activities based on nursery themes. One parent commented, 'When I drop my child off I feel like I have left him in a magical place.' The manager provides excellent levels of support to staff.

For instance, staff are given a generous amount of time each week to plan activities and complete children's assessments. The manager meets with staff regularly to have robust discussions on work performance and to accurately identify training needs. Staff have attended a very wide variety of courses, including a course on managing children's behaviour which has led to great improvements in this area.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Staff have an excellent understanding of what they need to look out for regarding concerns about a child's welfare. They have full understanding of the procedures to follow to deal with their concerns.

Staff undergo regular, comprehensive training to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. The manager has excellent systems in place to make sure that children are readily identified and well supported, where necessary. She has a robust recruitment procedure in place, including a series of comprehensive background checks to ensure staff suitability for their roles.