Brown Bear Nursery & Preschool at Great Moor

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children and families alike feel happy and safe in this nurturing and community focused nursery. Children smile and wave goodbye to their parents with ease as parents talk to key persons at the door. Parents report that the staff are like an extended family. This helps children to settle and feel safe and secure with all staff.

Children also benefit from staff who are in tune with their needs and act as positive role models. The leadership team and staff prioritise supporting children's well-being through the curriculum. They use familiar stories to teach children how to communicate their emotions. This helps children to articulate how they feel and promotes positive behaviour.

Children develop good communication skills due to timely targeted interventions and a staff team that is skilled in supporting children's language skills. Children have access to many songs, stories and rhymes, which supports their language development. Staff get down to the children's level and model a range of rich vocabulary. For example, when singing songs with babies, they use actions to accompany words such as 'wibble, wobble' as they shake their whole bodies. This helps babies to associate vocabulary with actions.

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

• The dedicated leadership team understands the importance of fostering parental partnerships from the start and supporting early communication and language skills in the home. A stay-and-play group is offered to parents with babies before attending the nursery. Those parents who attend the group report feeling at ease then when they access the nursery with their children. They also report having a greater awareness of the key rhymes and core books the nursery will share and introduce to their children as part of the curriculum. This helps to embed learning, both at home and in the nursery.
• The staff team works hard to develop a good understanding of what children know and need to learn next and communicates this effectively with parents. The team carefully considers how to support children to achieve their next steps. This leads to children making good progress from their individual starting points.
• In general, children's independence is well supported. They access their own resources and use real tools for purpose, such as using scissors to cut and snip. However, this is not consistently encouraged across the setting. Some staff perform routine tasks for children that they would benefit from attempting themselves, such as pouring their own drinks, serving their own meals and putting on their own coats.
• Staff plan effective opportunities for children to develop their physical skills. For example, older children use scissors with precision and use pencils to draw recognisable shapes and letters. Children exclaim, 'I drew a zig zag line', as they proudly share their work. Opportunities such as these help children to strengthen the small muscles in their hands. Children also develop their core strength by balancing along floor ladders, while babies crawl through tunnels and up and down ramps.
• The leadership team has an accurate self-evaluation of the strengths and areas for development of the setting. Leaders support staff with ongoing supervision and facilitate training needs successfully. Furthermore, leaders ensure they prioritise staff well-being and set clear and achievable performance targets. Staff are clear on what they need to do to improve their teaching. Consequently, staff morale is high. This helps to boost the quality of service provided to children and their families.
• The leadership team creates strong relationships with other professionals, which improves the quality of teaching at the nursery. For example, professionals who specialise in speech and language visit the setting regularly. They observe children's progress and offer advice and support to staff, which helps to enhance the care provided for all children, with a particular focus on children with emerging concerns or special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop a more consistent approach to encouraging children's independence and self-care skills during everyday routines.