Busy Bees Day Nursery at Long Eaton

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Older children confidently walk into the nursery when they arrive in the morning. Staff engage warmly with the children and interact with care and respect. They talk to babies and young children before they carry out care tasks. For example, they ask younger children, 'Do you want to have your nappy changed?' Children behave well. Staff remind them to share as they play on bicycles and tricycles. Older children learn to understand their emotions as staff read 'The Colour Monster' picture book and talk about times when children have happy and sad feelings. Staff use teddy bears to begin to talk with younger children about how they are feeling.

Children are learning to celebrate differences and appreciate what makes them unique. Staff provide books that represent children from different backgrounds and celebrate children's home festivals, such as Chinese New Year. Staff encourage children to make good use of the outdoor spaces available at the nursery. Older children develop their physical skills as they climb the ladder and slide down the slide. Younger children develop their small-muscle skills as they play with sand. As they dig and pour, staff talk about the different ways the sand pours when it is wet and when it is dry.

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

• Managers and staff have designed a curriculum that promotes learning for all children. They have a strong focus on enabling children to develop their communication and language skills.
• Staff provide children with a language-rich environment. They narrate what is happening as children play with trains on a track and extend children's vocabulary by introducing words like 'up' and 'down'. Staff use sign language to help children to develop their language skills. For example, they sign 'hungry' when children see that lunch is arriving.
• Staff plan activities around key themes and link these to children's interests. For example, staff notice that babies enjoy filling and posting, so they set up a game where babies can post toy fruit into the mouth of the 'hungry caterpillar'. Pre-school children are interested in space. They made a display about space and the planets and talked about wanting to become astronauts.
• Children are learning about numbers and mathematical ideas. Staff count out the number of feet a dinosaur has as children play with dinosaur figures in the sand tray. Older children learn about shapes as they roll out play dough with textured rolling pins and recognise the squares and triangles in the patterns that they make.
• Staff introduce children to scientific ideas. They ask children to guess which colours go together to make green. Children excitedly engage in an activity where they mix liquids of different colours to find out if their guesses are right.
• However, sometimes, the activities staff provide are not aligned closely enough with the specific needs of the children taking part. This means that sometimes the most-able children are not being appropriately challenged, while those who need more encouragement are not able to participate fully.
• Staff teach children about the world around them. Children learn about the natural world on visits to a local nature reserve. They start growing potatoes indoors, ready to plant outside in the nursery garden. Pre-school children take turns to be part of the nursery children's council for a week. This role includes taking on special responsibilities such as setting tables and helping staff to complete safety checks.
• Staff promptly identify children who need additional support, and they provide one-to-one time and small-group activities targeted to children's specific learning needs. For example, staff use bubbles and sensory toys to help children to learn to sit, listen and wait.
• Partnership working with parents is strong. Staff hold parent partnership meetings that enable parents to share their views. Parents know what their children are learning at nursery and say they feel confident that their children are being well cared for.
• Leaders and managers support staff in developing their knowledge of the areas of learning and how children develop. However, they have yet to sharpen their evaluation of the staff's practice to drive further improvement across the nursery.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to plan activities that align with the specific needs of the children, to enable all children to benefit from the learning
• enhance systems for monitoring staff practice to drive further improvement across the nursery.