Beeches Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children form positive relationships with the warm, caring and attentive staff. Staff provide comfort, such as cuddles, to children who need more reassurance. This helps children to feel safe and secure. Children develop their independence securely, including making choices about what to play with. Staff support children's awareness of expected behaviours. They model these to children, such as using good manners.

Staff offer a well-considered curriculum linked to the children's learning needs. They provide a unique, tailored curriculum with appropriate targets for children who need extra support for their learning. This helps to meet all children's learning needs and promotes their progress successfully. Overall, staff weave in good-quality teaching during their daily interactions with children. They talk and sing with children consistently, which helps to support children's communication and language skills. Staff promote children's awareness of mathematics effectively, such as by encouraging counting and recognition of numbers. Children are keen learners. For example, they enthusiastically join in with adult-led activities.

All children enjoy spending time outside. This provides opportunities for children to interact with each other and to explore, along with helping to promote their large physical development. On occasion, staff do not always consistently enhance children's large physical skills or support risk-taking as well as possible. Overall though, children develop their physical skills securely.

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

• The manager has a strong understanding of her responsibilities, including safeguarding and supporting children's individual needs. She understands the importance of acting on concerns about children's development. For example, she seeks advice from other professionals to support children's needs. Additional funding is used suitably, such as to buy resources to help close any gaps in children's learning.
• Staff receive regular support for their professional development and well-being. They understand the learning intentions and generally implement these effectively. The manager models high-quality practice to staff. Sometimes, staff do not fully reflect this practice to help them promote children's development even further. For example, during the inspection, not all staff built on the already good practice to further extend young children's early dressing skills.
• Staff plan activities to help children practise and develop their skills. For example, babies played with sand and spoons. This helps them to gain the physical skills to feed themselves at mealtimes. Toddlers and pre-school children extend this skill further, such as through self-serving food with tongs and spoons. This develops children's independence and small physical skills effectively.
• All children benefit from regular outdoor play and outings. This offers babies opportunities to walk on different surfaces to support their balance and coordination. Pre-school children practise counting as they coordinate their jumps along numbered squares. Some toddlers are confident to challenge their physical skills. However, staff do not consistently support them to take risks. Staff do not always build further on children's large physical development. For instance, they do not encourage children to try and use the bike pedals instead of their feet to propel themselves along.
• Children benefit from attractive and engaging activities. For example, babies and toddlers explored different materials and textures. There is a strong focus on reading books. This helps children to gain understanding of familiar words and phrases. Pre-school children listen attentively to books being read. They show a strong interest in discussing the story, for example by asking and answering questions.
• Staff teach children how to care for themselves. For instance, they teach toddlers how to clean their noses and wash their hands afterwards. During the inspection, pre-school children thoroughly enjoyed making fruit smoothies, learning about healthy eating and where food comes from. Children, including babies, independently access drinks of water to support their well-being.
• Children gain a sense of who they are. Staff display pictures of children's families and other items, such as flags from home countries. Children generally behave well. Staff guide their behaviour appropriately, such as reminding children to use their 'walking feet'. They give children consistent, warm praise and encouragement to support their self-esteem and confidence effectively.
• Staff provide effective settling-in arrangements. They offer home visits along with settling-in visits. These support children to become familiar with staff. Staff gain effective information from parents to help them meet children's individual needs. Parents speak highly about the nursery, including the communication between them and the staff and manager.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to embed and build on their teaching skills to help raise the quality of practice and promote children's development even further
• enhance staff's teaching to support children's confidence to take risks and to build further on the development of their large physical skills.