Acorns Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children settle well. Staff create a warm and caring atmosphere. Young children engage through gestures while staff talk to them enthusiastically. Older children express their confidence as they speak to staff. This demonstrates that children feel secure. Children show care and concern towards others. They are happy to help and share well. Staff have clear expectations for children. They create clear routines, which help children understand what is happening now and what comes next. This helps children understand about managing their own behaviour.

Staff provide a range of activities to support children's development. Babies develop their fine motor skills as they build towers and knock them down with excitement. Toddlers splash in water as staff count with them how many ducks they can see. Pre-school children practise their cutting skills as they create Valentine's Day crafts for their families. Children positively engage in their learning.

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

• Children are making good progress, particularly, children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff know the children well. They work closely with external agencies to further support children's development. Staff are open to advice and ideas, which can help them improve outcomes for children. This helps to close gaps in children's development.
• Staff assessments of children are effective. They assess children as individuals and as a group. Following identifying emerging gaps in children's mathematical development, staff have been focusing in this area throughout the nursery with huge success. Young children are developing simple number sequences through songs and older children count groups of objects. This effective assessment procedure helps to ensure that children are meeting their expectations in all areas of their development.
• Children learn about the world around them through exciting and novel activities that are based on their interests. Following children's growing interest in sports, staff create an Olympic-themed activity, encouraging lots of discussions about different sports from countries around the world.
• Overall, staff promote children's language development. Staff encourage younger children's language by using gestures to support understanding. Pre-school staff provide a sociable environment, where children can develop their conversational skills. However, occasionally staff do not challenge children's thinking. For example, during stories staff ask questions that children can easily answer, however, they do not go on to ask more thought provoking questions that help children to think more deeply.
• Children engage well in their learning. They show enthusiasm to join in with all the experiences staff provide for them. Often children will participate in an activity a few times before moving on. This demonstrates children are developing positive attitudes to learning.
• Children learn about healthy lifestyles. They regularly access fresh air to burn off energy in a big outdoor space. Children have healthy meals and can explain how some food makes them 'big and strong'. The leaders have won the 'Healthy Setting' award for their impact on children's health and nutrition. These experiences contribute to children developing positive attitudes to their health and well-being.
• Staff have strong bonds with children and understand their needs. When children become a little emotional or are unable to communicate their needs, caring staff comfort them and help them to express what they want. This helps children to feel safe and secure.
• Leaders provide training for staff based on children's needs. For example, staff who work with babies have recently updated their knowledge of how to meet their needs. However, there has been an oversight of some staff development. Some staff need further support with their understanding of how children develop. This leads to the next steps for children not being as precise as they could be.
• Partnership with parents is strong. Parents say staff communicate well and share activities to try at home. Staff encourage parents to send in observations of their children from home. They share these observations with the children. This helps develop consistency for children's learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to build on children's ability to think more deeply
• strengthen professional development of some staff to further develop their knowledge of how children learn, so next steps for children are more precise.