Burton Day Nursery Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy fully engaging in learning from the first moments they arrive. Leaders and staff know each child well and create engaging curriculum activities that challenge them to acquire new skills and knowledge. Children become deeply absorbed in their learning. They make cookies with home-made play dough that they have previously weighed and mixed. Children look through recipe books to decide what type of biscuit to make, what shape to cut them and decorate them with glass beads. Staff skilfully incorporate rich vocabulary through discussions with children, asking them to explain what they have made. They help children use mathematical vocabulary to describe their creations. Staff immerse children in exciting storytelling. Children act out 'wading' through imaginative mud as they retell the poem, 'We're going a on bear hunt.'

Children at the nursery are consistently well-behaved, happy, and have a positive 'can-do' attitude. Staff are warm, friendly, and respectful in their interactions with the children, playing alongside them to guide their learning and support their emotional needs. They encourage social skills by playing fun board games, helping children take turns, assist each other, and learn to wait for their go. Staff provide extra time and attention to children who feel unsettled, comforting with them until they feel confident enough to play with their peers.

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

• Leaders have developed an ambitious curriculum that incorporates children's interests and promotes their curiosity. They support staff to understand the curriculum more deeply by providing assessment tools that help them identify children's developmental next steps. Leaders and staff focus on ensuring that children are ready for school. Through consultation with local schools, they focus on children's independence, self-help skills and on developing positive attitudes towards learning. Staff design well-thought-out activities that intrigue children and help them make good progress. Children sustain their concentration for long periods of time because activities in the environment are engaging, stimulating and appropriately challenging for them.
• Leaders and staff value and celebrate books as a key foundation for children's learning. Staff read and share various texts with children, including stories, nursery rhymes, and information books. Children benefit from good quality time with staff as they share books and have important conversations about new words, pictures and ideas. Children view themselves as readers and regularly look through books on their own or with their friends. They recall key phases from stories and have constructive discussions about photos and illustrations that they see.
• Children's independent and social skills are well developed. Most children can sustain play with their friends by listening to one another and taking each others ideas into account. Children work together to complete a jigsaw puzzle, maintaining their concentration to complete the task independently. They share ideas to create role-play scenarios and adopt roles which they maintain when playing doctors and patients.
• Leaders and staff have high expectations for all children. They assess children's needs accurately and quickly identify developmental gaps in children's learning, particularly for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff work with external agencies to develop specific teaching materials to help children make good progress. However, occasionally, some children do not have enough targeted teaching time to help them practise the skills and knowledge they need to rapidly close gaps in their learning.
• Children behave well. They listen to staff and respond to their requests. Staff support children to participate in the running of the nursery. They tidy up when asked and help set the tables with cutlery as they prepare for hot, home-cooked lunches. They serve vegetables for themselves, are polite and patient as wait until their friends are ready before eating together.
• Leaders and staff have established good partnerships with parents. They communicate children's developmental achievements and where they need support. Staff build trustworthy relationships with parents and caregivers. They attentively listen to parents' concerns regarding their children's development and provide ideas and updates on their progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide more targeted teaching for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to help them learn and practise the skills and knowledge they need to make rapid progress.