Banana Moon Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are warmly welcomed into the nursery and readily leave their parents at the door. Children form secure bonds with staff and benefit from cuddles and reassurance when needed, to help them feel safe and secure. New children receive one-to-one interaction with familiar adults to help them settle.

Children benefit from a varied curriculum, both indoors and outdoors, based on their individual learning needs and interests. Staff identify the specific learning needs of each age group. For babies, the focus is on following home routines to help them settle quickly and build strong attachments with staff. For older children, staff promote their independence through daily activities and support their growing vocabulary. For example, children serve their own meals and have independent choices about what they want to play with in the outdoor area. As a result, all children make steady progress, including children who speak English as an additional language and children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Children generally behave well. When minor disputes occur, staff talk to children about making good choices, give gentle reminders of the nursery rules and explain how their behaviour could affect others.

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

• Staff know the children and their families well. Before children start at the nursery, they gather information from parents and other early years settings. They use this information to consider what children need to learn next. While there is a key-person system in place, all staff know how to meet the individual care needs of children. For instance, staff have clear strategies to support children with medical needs or allergies to ensure their safety.
• Children have daily opportunities to be physically active in the nursery gardens. They show good coordination as staff encourage them to use the small climbing wall. Children demonstrate pride as they reach the top, happy with their achievements. In the mud kitchen, children use the selection of utensils to pretend to mix in the saucepans. They use their imagination as they re-create a birthday cake out of mud and use stones to represent the candles.
• Children enjoy various activities at the nursery. For example, young babies eagerly join in with painting and printing activities. Toddlers explore small fishing rods and delight as they catch wooden sea creatures. Overall, staff extend children's learning as they play. However, this is not consistent. At times, they do not focus their teaching to fully engage children and, on occasions, children wander around and disengage.
• Children's communication and language are supported well. Staff are good role models and extend children's language effectively. For example, when toddlers use single words, staff repeat these back, adding additional words to the sentence. Babies benefit from back-and-forth interactions that help lay firm foundations for their language and cognitive development.
• Children are beginning to understand the daily routines. For example, staff use the 'tidy-up song' to signal that they need to help tidy up in preparation for lunch. However, during lunchtime routines, children wait too long before their turn to self-serve their lunch and they become restless. Additionally, when they move from inside the nursery to the garden, this takes some time as children wait for others to be ready. At these times, children start to push each other as they stand and wait.
• Partnerships with parents are a strength of the nursery. Parents appreciate the caring and dedicated staff, as well as the feedback they receive about their children's day. They state that staff are genuinely proud of their children's achievements. Parents value the nutritious home-cooked meals provided at the nursery.
• Staff report feeling well supported by the manager. She regularly observes their teaching practice and provides helpful feedback. Staff attend training courses to enhance their professional development. They share new ideas with the staff team and implement these in practice. For example, staff attend a course to support children's oral hygiene. They now provide additional activities to raise children's awareness of good oral hygiene.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus staff's teaching during children's play to maximise and fully extend their learning
• review the nursery routines to ensure that children do not wait for prolonged periods of time.