Bright Horizons Teddies Loughton Nursery And Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and confident. They settle quickly into the nursery with the help of the kind and caring staff team. Babies benefit from warm and gentle interactions. For instance, they quickly fall to sleep as the staff cuddle and gently rock them. Staff try to maintain familiar routines for the babies, which helps to promote the well-being of the youngest children who attend.

Staff support children to develop early literacy skills across the nursery. Babies enjoy looking at the pictures in books and use their emerging vocabulary to identify things they see. Toddlers enjoy joining in with familiar phrases in stories. The oldest children keenly gather around staff outside to share a book together. As a result, children in the nursery develop a passion for stories and books.

Children develop a strong understanding of different feelings and emotions through meaningful discussions with staff. They talk together about how characters may feel in the stories they look at. Children learn new vocabulary relating to this. For instance, staff speak to them about the faces they make and what feelings these facial expressions represent. This allows children to successfully communicate how they feel with those around them.

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

• Staff across the nursery know the children well and speak confidently about the children in their rooms. They adapt the provision on offer to meet the needs of the children who currently attend. Staff gather information from parents regarding children's abilities and interests when they start at the nursery. They use this information to provide children with interesting activities. This helps to keep children engaged.
• Support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is good. Staff learn how to support children with specialist equipment through discussions with parents and other professionals. Staff make time in their day to work with children on a one-to-one basis where required. This provides children with focused opportunities to practise the skills they need for the next stage in their learning.
• The current manager has recently started her role. She has a clear vision for the nursery and receives effective support from leaders within the wider organisation. Overall, staff feel well supported in their roles and recognise the positive impact the manager is having on the nursery.
• Staff help children to recall past information and connect it to their current learning. For instance, staff encourage children to talk about their experience of going to the beach while they look at a story about mermaids. Children also build their own connections between their experiences independently. For example, they look at a story with staff and friends and then choose to build a house for the characters in the story.
• Children behave well across the nursery. Staff speak to them about why the rules are in place. For instance, they remind children that they need to ask a member of staff before returning indoors from the garden to keep themselves safe. Children form friendships with one another, actively seeking out their friends to join the games they play.
• All children progress well. However, planning for children's learning opportunities across the nursery is not consistent. Staff occasionally struggle to plan activities which are appropriate for the age and stage of development of the children they work with. Other staff sometimes plan meaningful activities without providing opportunities for children to extend their knowledge or transfer their learning to other areas within the room. This impacts children's ability to build on their knowledge and skills spontaneously.
• The manager is actively involved in developing staff practice. For instance, she spends time in the rooms speaking to staff about the curriculum and their interactions with children. She is in the process of introducing a more in-depth supervision process with a focus on professional development, but has not yet had a chance to embed this fully.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consistently plan appropriate opportunities for all children to build on their existing knowledge and skills
• focus professional development to support staff to implement the curriculum on offer even more effectively.