Timbers Nursery School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Leaders and staff are extremely committed to providing an inclusive environment.

They use their comprehensive knowledge and experience to plan a rich and varied selection of well-organised activities, across the curriculum. These engage children and they focus for extremely long periods. All children, including those that speak English as an additional language and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), make the best possible progress.

They are curious, highly motivated to learn, and eager to find out new things. Staff are exceptionally nurturing, and children's care and learning needs ...are given top priority. Children demonstrate that they are happy, settled and feel secure, as they become engrossed in their play and explore and investigate with enthusiasm.

Children's behaviour is exceptional. They thrive on the praise they receive from the staff and show extremely high levels of emotional well-being. Staff are tremendous role models and have high expectations of children's behaviour.

They implement highly effective behaviour strategies, which support children to have an excellent understanding of right from wrong, from an early age. Children learn about feelings, how to manage these and the impact that their actions have on others. For example, they are encouraged to compliment each other's achievements, to help them to understand that being kind to others can make them both feel happy.

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

The extremely experienced team provides a vast range of activities that promote children's enjoyment and learning effectively. For example, when children explore guttering and cardboard tubes in the garden, staff encourage them to use different resources to see which travel the fastest. Children predict that a cylinder will go faster than a cuboid, but cars will go superfast.

Partnerships with parents and other professionals involved in children's learning are very successful. They share effective strategies to ensure any gaps in children's learning are closed rapidly. Parents are supported extremely well to extend children's learning.

Additional funding has been used to provide resources for parents to share with children at home, including story books to encourage parents to boost children's love of reading.Staff demonstrate a superb understanding of how children learn and develop. They have interesting conversations with them and listen carefully to what children have to say.

For example, when children show them a paper butterfly and tell them that butterflies' wings are symmetrical, they ask what this means. Children respond and tell staff that it means they are both the same.Staff provide a language-rich environment and promote children's early speaking skills through innovative and successful strategies.

For instance, young children participate in small language groups, and develop extremely good listening and attention skills. They become engrossed in listening to stories and singing songs and rhymes. Older children demonstrate a considerable understanding as they use pictures to build stories and predict what might happen next.

Staff use wide-ranging words to extend children's vocabulary. For example, children learn that 'sad' can also be described as 'unhappy', 'sorrowful' and 'gloomy'.Staff are extremely effective in building on children's interests, to help extend their thinking skills further.

For example, during discussions, staff and children talk about ways to get across a river. Children make suggestions, such as they could swim or build a bridge. Staff develop this further and provide materials for children to build their own bridges.

Children spend long periods exploring and investigating different ways of building bridges that are strong enough to balance a toy dinosaur.Staff carry out in-depth assessments of children's learning. They use these to accurately identify any emerging gaps and plan activities to target specific areas of learning.

They have exceptionally high expectations of the children and ensure that they provide challenging activities that motivate them to learn.Children have a considerable knowledge of the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. For instance, during snack they talk about the milk that they are drinking containing calcium and know that this makes their bones and teeth strong.

They also clean their teeth to maintain good dental hygiene.Leaders are highly committed to staff's ongoing professional development. They ensure they attend regular training and cascade the information throughout the setting, to help enhance all staff's knowledge and skills.

The leadership team is proactive in making positive changes. They use a variety of methods to evaluate their provision, including seeking the views of parents and children. This helps them to maintain the wonderful teaching and care.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Leaders ensure that staff keep their safeguarding knowledge up to date. Staff are very aware of their roles and responsibilities in keeping children safe.

They complete regular training as well as discussions during staff meetings, to help them to recognise the signs that might indicate a child is at risk of harm. Regular risk assessments enable staff to identify and minimise any potential risks to children and ensure they are kept safe in the environment. Robust recruitment procedures ensure that adults working with children are suitable.