Boat House Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children benefit from good care and education at this inclusive and welcoming setting. The nursery is well maintained, clean and secure. The experienced leaders promote the well-being of every child. Staff develop professional, caring and supportive relationships with all children and their parents and/or carers. This enables parents to become partners in their children's learning and development, and children feel safe in the staff's attentive care.

Staff provide children with predictable and consistent daily routines that help them to feel confident and in control of their learning. Leaders and staff promote the nursery's 'golden rules'. This helps children to learn how to become sociable and understand courteous behaviours. Children are self-assured and demonstrate appropriate confidence in a range of situations. The provider's curriculum ensures that children's good mental and physical health are supported well.

Staff plan engaging learning activities. They carefully use different strategies to support children with a range of additional needs to develop their attention and listening skills. During adult-led activities, staff provide differentiated and personalised teaching to capture all children's curiosity. For example, children become fascinated in 'bucket time', where they joyfully observe how bubbles and slime look and move. This helps all children, including those who are disadvantaged and children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), to make good progress in their learning.

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

• The nursery is well led and managed. The management team reflect and make changes to practice to help continually improve the service they provide for children and families. Following a notification of a safeguarding incident ,where staff failed to recognise that steps to refer this to other agencies should have been taken, leaders have taken swift and effective action. They have identified specific training and ensured that all staff gain advanced knowledge about the best practice for dealing with child protection matters.
• Leaders recognise the vital importance of helping all children to develop communication and language skills. A rigorous assessment and intervention programme has been implemented. If children's development in speech, language or communication is delayed, staff provide support to help them catch up. Consequently, children know many words and can use these words in their own communication with others. For example, when sharing books, children proudly point out the animals they see in the pictures. Children are developing the communication skills they require for their onward education.
• Staff understand the provider's curriculum and promote many aspects of it successfully. For example, staff deliver early writing well. They encourage children to make marks in messy play or on paper using paints and crayons. However, leaders have not identified that staff do not know how to teach some aspects of the early literacy curriculum and in what order. This means that some activities to promote early reading do not fully support children's learning progressively.
• The provision for children with SEND is of high quality. Staff are skilled in the early identification of need. They work with many other agencies to provide children with access to early support. Staff use a range of strategies to include all children in learning. Additional funding is used appropriately to provide children with resources that support their individual needs. This helps all children make good progress from their starting points.
• Staff help children to learn how to increasingly manage their personal care needs. For instance, staff support toddlers to wash and dry their hands independently before beginning their snack. During mealtimes, staff promote children's use of cutlery to feed themselves. Activities are provided to support children to learn about the importance of good oral health. Consequently, children learn the essential knowledge to help keep themselves healthy.
• The support for parents is excellent. Stay-and-play sessions organised for parents help them to understand more about their children's good learning and development. Parents gain practical advice about dummy use, weaning and toilet training. Additionally, the online platform used by the setting provides parents with information relating to their child's care and learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop monitoring further, to help identify and address any weaknesses in the implementation of the curriculum
• support staff to develop the required subject knowledge so that they provide children with developmentally appropriate and well-sequenced learning.