Bidford Bright Stars Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Since the last inspection, leaders and staff have reflected on practice and made positive improvements. All staff offer a warm welcome to children as they start their day at nursery. They take extra special care to ensure children feel safe. Staff come down to children's eye level and provide comforting reassurance if they are feeling a little unsure. This supports children to develop secure relationships to help them feel safe and secure.

Staff have high expectations for children's behaviours. They model kind and respectful interactions, which helps children to learn how to manage their own feelings. For instance, when children face conflict during play, staff work with them to resolve this. Children respond positively and as a result learn to take turns and play cooperatively together. Children enjoy varied opportunities to develop their physical skills in the garden. For example, children build with planks and crates to create obstacles. This helps to build their confidence in climbing and balancing.

Children benefit from a broad curriculum that is ambitious and inclusive. They make informed choices in their play and confidently follow their own thoughts and ideas. For example, they select the tools they want to use as they play with mud. Staff support children to use a variety of communication strategies, including sign language. This helps them to make their wishes known.

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

• There is clear oversight of the setting, and management has refined the induction and supervision process to support staff in their roles and responsibilities. This has resulted in a positive impact across the nursery. Leaders support staff by offering a range of training for their professional development. Staff attend regular supervisions, and leaders offer well-being sessions for additional support. This has raised the morale of staff, and they said they love working at the nursery.
• Staff plan activities for children to develop their emerging skills. However, there are times when staff do not always fully consider the correct sequence of learning and how they are going to adapt their teaching to support children's development. When children practise scissor skills and sometimes struggle to hold them correctly, some staff do not always consider the stages of development in preparation for learning this skill. This means not all children's learning is precisely sequenced to support them to build on what they already know and can do.
• Staff provide an inclusive environment that includes all children in daily experiences. Staff work closely with parents and other professionals to ensure all children receive timely support for their development. Regular sharing of support plans with parents and professionals for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) ensures a collaborative approach to support expected progress of their development.
• Children access sensory trays to build on their interests. They explore these with filling and emptying containers with different sensory resources. However, they quickly lose interest because staff do not always assess when these require replenishing or further challenge to support children's critical thinking or investigation skills effectively. This means not all children's learning is always extended or supported to the highest possible level.
• Parents share that all staff are approachable and extremely supportive. Parents cite communication as one of the biggest strengths of the setting. They feel involved and well informed about their children's learning and development and appreciate the feedback they receive from their child's key person.
• Staff nurture babies to explore their learning environment. Interactions between staff and babies promote their physical and emotional well-being. Care routines are respectful and maximise opportunities for communication. Babies confidently bring books to staff and snuggle in as they share stories. This supports babies' early literacy skills as together, they turn the pages and point to the pictures.
• Staff support children to develop their independence. They offer appropriate praise and encouragement as children persevere with self-care tasks, such as putting on their shoes and washing their hands. Older children develop the skills needed to competently pour their own drinks and clear away after lunch. Staff enable children to develop important life skills, such as using cutlery from an early age. This helps as children transition from room to room across the setting, as well as supporting the transition to school.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to sequence learning opportunities more effectively in order to sharpen the focus on what they want children to learn next
• strengthen planning to extend opportunities for exploratory and investigative play in order to extend children's critical thinking skills even further.