Bright Owls Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are well behaved in this warm and welcoming nursery. Practitioners are committed to helping children to settle by forming secure bonds with them. Children's behaviour is consistently good. They play cooperatively, share resources and demonstrate turn-taking skills as they play. Children show care and consideration for their friends. Their emotional well-being is supported by skilled practitioners, who teach them how to identify which emotions they are feeling. Children are shown practical strategies to manage these feelings.

All children make good progress in their communication and language skills, despite the range of starting points in development they have. Practitioners use gestures and signs to support children who speak English as an additional language and encourage them to learn key vocabulary. This enables all children to access the exciting curriculum in the nursery.

The well-thought-out curriculum takes into consideration children's interests. It provides suitable challenges for each child depending on their individual needs. Practitioners build on children's backgrounds to extend their learning. For example, children are excited by a tray filled with a farm experience. They pretend to drive tractors over hay bales, pull up carrots and potatoes from the soil, and march the farmer through the oats. Practitioners extend children's discussions to the potatoes they eat at home. Children speak proudly about the food their families eat. All children's cultural backgrounds are celebrated in this inclusive environment.

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

• Practitioners prioritise the early identification of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. They liaise effectively with other professionals and play a supporting role for parents in this process. This helps all children to achieve positive outcomes and promotes positive parent partnerships.
• Practitioners feel very well supported by the manager. They speak enthusiastically about their job and the children they care for. All practitioners have opportunities to attend a range of training. This has a positive impact on children as they keenly implement new ideas. Some practitioners recently attended further training on child development and use this to challenge children to reach their next steps in learning.
• Children are fully prepared for the transition to school. They confidently follow routines and are actively independent in self-care and their own learning. Teachers from local schools comment on how 'ready to learn' children are when they leave this nursery. Children confidently set tables for lunch, serve their own food and manage their own belongings. Children are given many choices throughout the day, which promotes their critical-thinking skills. Practitioners encourage children's positive attitudes, for example by fostering their perseverance skills when faced with a problem.
• Children enjoy healthy living habits in this nursery. They are provided with fresh home-cooked food, nutritious snacks and have daily exercise. Children are given opportunities to understand where their food comes from. They grow fruits and vegetables in their garden, which helps to enhance their knowledge of what they eat. Many months later, children still recall the strawberries which they grew outside.
• Practitioners educate parents on the importance of oral hygiene and support them to register their children with a dentist. Children learn about the importance of healthy teeth and share this information with their families to promote oral hygiene at home.
• Children who speak English as an additional language are very well supported. They make good progress in this nursery, especially in their communication and language development. Practitioners constantly model language for children through a stream of purposeful chatter to them. However, there are times when staff do not use alternative strategies to help children to understand what is happening next.
• Parents speak very highly of this nursery. They comment on how they trust the practitioners. Parents are delighted with the progress their children make. They appreciate how hard practitioners work to ensure that their children get the best start in life. Parents remark that their three-year-old children learn how to speak English and can now teach their family the correct pronunciation at home.
• Practitioners ensure that communication is accessible to all families, which helps to develop strong parent partnerships. All communication is translated for the range of languages which children speak. Practitioners use newsletters to inform parents about the purpose behind the activities provided each week.
• Practitioners understand how to keep safe online and supervise children when they access electronic devices in the nursery. However, some practitioners are unsure of how to help children to learn how to keep themselves safe online.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support practitioners to develop a consistent approach to helping children with additional needs to understand what is happening next
• develop practitioners' knowledge of how to support children's understanding of how to keep themselves safe online.