A Star Kids Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children settle easily and are happy at the nursery. They demonstrate positive attitudes to their learning. Children initiate their own play and are interested to play with a wide range of resources. For example, they explore with construction toys to create designs and bring their ideas to life. Despite facing some challenges, children persevere with their play, and they proudly show staff what they have built. This helps to build children's confidence, resilience and self-esteem. Children develop their independence while doing small tasks on their own, such as feeding themselves and washing their hands.

Children display good social skills when playing with others. For example, they share and take turns to use the resources. Children show good mobility, coordination and balance. They learn to express their needs and interests effectively. Staff use children's home languages to communicate with them to support their understanding. Children demonstrate good speaking and listening skills. Staff have high expectations of children. They make them aware of the rules in the nursery and set clear boundaries for them to learn right from wrong. As a result, children consistently display positive behaviour. They are kind and caring towards other children.

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

• Staff observe and assess children's learning effectively. They keep parents informed about their children's learning and work together to plan what children need to learn next. The strong partnerships between staff and parents ensure that there is consistency of support for children between the nursery and home. Subsequently, children make good progress with their development in comparison to their starting points in learning.
• Staff support children to develop their communication and language skills well. For example, they ask questions to encourage children to talk about their play. Staff support children to increase their vocabulary and develop their understanding.
• Staff provide good opportunities for children to develop their literacy skills. For instance, children listen to stories regularly and talk about the characters they see in the books. In addition, staff link stories to other activities and use props to extend children's learning. Staff encourage children to make marks using a range of materials to help develop their early writing skills.
• Children have access to good resources and activities to develop their mathematical skills. For example, staff encourage children to identify numbers on cards and count different items in their play.
• Staff support children to keep healthy and to develop their physical skills effectively. For example, they provide children with fruit and vegetables to eat, show them how to brush their teeth and get them to do a range of stretches and movements with their body.
• Staff model good behaviour for children to copy. Consequently, children behave well and show respect to others. Staff support children to develop their personal, social and emotional skills effectively. Children form close attachments with staff, and they play alongside or cooperatively with other children.
• The manager completes regular supervision meetings with staff to review their performance, well-being and children's progress, to ensure that children receive good-quality education and care. In addition, she offers staff guidance and makes sure that they maintain their continuous professional development to keep their knowledge and skills current.
• The manager evaluates the nursery effectively and works with the team to consistently improve children's experiences. For example, the manager and staff support children to be familiar with daily routines so they know what they will do next and to enable smooth transitions between their play and routine tasks.
• Staff work with other professionals to plan targets for children with gaps in their development. However, staff do not consistently support these children to join in activities and mealtimes with other children to strengthen their development.
• Staff provide good activities for children to learn about the natural world. However, they do not provide varied and continuous activities for children to learn about people and cultures.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• encourage children with gaps in their development to take part in group activities and routine tasks with other children to support their development further
• increase opportunities to strengthen children's awareness of the similarities and differences between people and cultures.