Adorables Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Older children are happy and excited when they arrive at the nursery. Younger children, who are reluctant to leave parents, soon settle and become immersed in self-chosen play. Children build strong bonds with the nurturing and supportive staff. Younger children go to staff for reassurance and cuddles when they feel unsure about new people in the nursery. Staff are positive role models and have high expectations for children's behaviour. Children listen to staff and understand what is expected of them. They are supported to share and take turns from a young age, and they are praised highly when they do this.

Staff incorporate a strong curriculum for mathematics into everyday play opportunities to maximise children's learning. Children recognise and name numbers on cars. They can count how many items they have threaded onto string and know how many 'one more' will make.

Children play well, either alone or with their friends. They show good imagination as they pretend to be ill in the role-play hospital. They assure their friends that giving them an injection will not hurt them. Staff help children to develop good physical skills, and children love to be outside. They show good coordination and control as they use wheeled toys confidently, moving them easily backwards and forwards. Younger children are supported to climb small steps and carefully move down slides.

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

• Since the last inspection, the provider/manager has ensured that the action raised has been addressed. She has offered training to everyone to ensure that all adults working in the nursery know how to address any safeguarding concerns, in order to keep children safe.
• Overall, staff ensure that all children develop confidence in their speaking skills. Older children converse well with staff, peers and visitors to the setting, using good back-and-forth conversation. Babies begin to babble and show they understand songs as they mimic the actions that staff do. However, support for children's speaking skills, particularly those children who speak English as an additional language, is not yet fully developed to help them to build even better speaking skills. Staff do not always recognise the benefit of using children's dominant language to support children's understanding further.
• Overall, the curriculum is carefully planned to support and reflect the individual needs of children and what they need to learn next. This helps most children to focus and become involved in their play. However, occasionally, activities are too challenging for some children, which means they struggle to do what staff want them to do. For example, a writing activity is offered, but not all children can hold the pencil appropriately and so struggle to participate.
• Staff help children to learn how to complete tasks on their own, for example putting on their own coats and shoes for outdoor play, pouring drinks at snack time, spreading their own butter on toast and cutting up fruit. Children are praised highly for this, which contributes to raising children's self-esteem and confidence and gives them key skills in readiness for school.
• Staff support children to develop a love of reading. Children of all ages listen well to stories read by staff. They look at books of their choosing independently or with their friends. Staff plan many activities to support children's early writing skills. For example, children skilfully thread beads onto string, while younger children have fun making marks with water and brushes.
• Leaders prioritise partnerships with parents. Effective settling-in procedures ensure that key persons forge meaningful relationships with parents from the start. Parents are extremely appreciative of the care and support that they and their children receive. Staff provide parents with regular updates about children's learning and development through daily discussions and an online communication system.
• The provider/manager takes time to evaluate the provision on offer to children. She offers regular supervision to staff and encourages them to attend training to help with specific areas of children's development, for example how to manage children who bite, which has had a positive impact on children's behaviour. However, leaders do not coach and monitor staff's practice robustly enough to ensure that their teaching skills fully maximise children's learning at every opportunity.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff to recognise and use every opportunity to support children to develop and use their growing vocabulary and language skills, particularly for those children who speak English as an additional language
• support staff to focus more precisely on the individual learning needs of children to be sure that activities are pitched appropriately, particularly during adult-led activities
• improve the coaching and mentoring arrangements for individual staff to raise the quality of interactions across the setting to consistently maximise children's learning experiences.