The Wood Shed Forest School and Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children are extremely happy here.

They thoroughly enjoy being outside and learning about the natural world as they explore and investigate. Children concentrate and actively engage with their play and learning, supported by highly skilled staff. The well-planned curriculum provides an excellent variety of activities that captivate the children's imaginations and allow them to be creative and independent thinkers.

For example, children delighted in collecting leaves and twigs to create a reindeer. Managers and staff have high expectations of what children can achieve and are highly supportive of all children's i...ndividual needs. All children make very strong progress from their starting points, including disadvantaged children.

Children know the routines exceptionally well and this helps them to thrive. For example, they sit calmly during lunchtimes and interact with their friends and members of staff. For young children, this is an impressive feat.

Children's behaviour is excellent. They follow the 'forest rules' and have respect for each other. Staff constantly monitor the environment to ensure children's safety and teach them how to keep themselves safe in the woods.

Staff are excellent role models and create a warm and welcoming family atmosphere where children feel safe and secure. This helps children to settle quickly.

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

The manager and his team are extremely dedicated and are committed to providing the highest standards of care and education through a highly effective and broad curriculum.

Teaching is consistently innovative and inspiring, providing activities that offer optimum challenge for children. Skilful teaching and extensive resources about the natural environment spark children's inquisitive nature.Staff focus strongly on building children's communication and language skills through effective questioning and meaningful discussions as they play.

They use stories, rhymes, songs and activities to engage and inspire children. For example, staff play the guitar, and children thoroughly enjoy dancing and singing along to songs of their choice.Relevant and effective training is ongoing and continuous to support staff's professional development and ensure that they have an excellent understanding of working with young children.

Staff monitor children's progress closely and they skilfully plan for the next steps in learning.Children have a wide variety of excellent, interesting physical challenges. They learn to balance and climb confidently on logs and fallen trees and build their own hideouts.

Staff make exceptionally good use of the forest to promote children's learning and to build their confidence, self-esteem and independence. Children learn to look after the wildlife as they handle minibeasts carefully and return them to their natural habitats.Communication between staff and parents is excellent.

Parents speak very highly of the nursery and are extremely happy with the progress their children make. Managers implement a range of highly successful strategies to engage parents in their children's learning and provide ideas for continual learning at home.Staff are highly effective in supporting children's understanding of the importance of healthy lifestyles and good personal care routines.

Children independently wash their hands before enjoying nutritious, freshly prepared meals together. Children settle quickly in the cosy yurt if they need to rest.The manager has developed an extremely strong team of staff with a firm ethos, creating a calm, nurturing and inclusive environment where children thrive.

They value, respect and celebrate diversity, and staff are well trained to understand the needs of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.Staff make excellent use of their knowledge and skills to support children of all abilities to learn to manage their feelings and emotions. For example, children make clay faces and explore facial expressions.

This also develops children's small-muscle skills and dexterity.Children are extremely confident and very highly motivated to learn. Mathematics is deeply embedded into all areas of the stimulating environment and outstanding teaching practice.

This was evident, for example, as children counted scoops of rainwater they had collected from the bottom of a tree.Children have excellent safety awareness. They are aware of the forest boundary markers and are supported to take appropriate risks through developing trust in themselves and in others.

For example, they use whistles to locate each other in a game of hide and seek.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.All staff are highly vigilant in promoting safety in the forest.

Children's welfare and well-being are top priorities. Staff continuously explain to children how to stay safe. For example, children learn how to keep safe around campfires and when using sharp tools for cutting wood.

The manager and staff have completed safeguarding training and have a good knowledge of the signs and symptoms of abuse. They know the procedures to follow if they have a concern about a child in their care as well as the whistle-blowing procedure. They carry out robust daily risk assessments of the forest area and make sure that children are always well supervised through the effective deployment of staff.