Busy Bees Day Nursery at Reading Woodley

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive excited and eager to start their day. They respond with smiles to the warm and friendly greetings from staff. Children are motivated to learn and swiftly engage in the exciting activities on offer. They enjoy joining in with friends and readily invite them into their play. Children welcome new people and keenly engage with them. For example, babies share a photo album of their family with the inspector and beam with pride. This affirms that children feel safe and comfortable at the setting.

Children learn to be independent from the outset. They are given ample opportunities to practise and manage their self-care skills, which they do with increasing success. For instance, babies take tissues to clean their noses. Toddlers learn to use a knife and fork at mealtimes. Older children organise plates and cutlery in the dining room and self-serve their meals.

Children behave very well and show respect, such as when they move from one routine to the next in a calm manner. Staff use prompts to help them understand and follow the rules, such as to use 'walking feet' indoors. Children's emotional development is supported well. They learn to recognise different emotions in an age-appropriate way. For instance, older children identify how they are feeling by accessing an emotions display board.

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

• Leaders and staff are passionate about children's learning and offering them unique experiences. Staff provide opportunities for children to learn about real-life events. For instance, older children participate in a 'snack bar' experience. They role play exchanging money for a selection of healthy fruits and snacks. This helps develop children's understanding of the world, when they make good food choices and use money.
• Staff recognise the importance of raising children's awareness of the diverse world they live in. Staff use a wide selection of resources, such as books and toys, to explore different cultures. For instance, children talk about the similarities and differences between a variety of traditional costumes in photographs from around the world. Their interests are further sparked as they design and make their own costumes for dolls. In this way, they are supported to develop an awareness of what makes people unique.
• The special educational needs coordinator plays a vital role in supporting staff to help address persistent gaps in children's learning. For example, children with speech delay express what they want to do next effectively by using a selection of photos of different activities.
• The manager evaluates the effectiveness of the provision regularly. She actively gains an overview of strengths and areas for development. For example, there is a high priority placed on staff's well-being. Staff feel valued and their morale is high. This leads to a cohesive and dedicated team. Although the manager monitors staff's practice to highlight some training needs for further improvement, this approach is not yet consistent for every staff member.
• On the whole, staff promote children's speaking and listening skills well. They readily engage in two-way conversations to help children understand the importance of active listening and responding. For instance, babies initiate conversations with staff, who respond with enthusiasm. Babies happily babble in response. Staff engage older children in discussions on topics that interest them. However, on occasions, they ask too many questions in quick succession, which does not fully allow children time to think carefully before responding appropriately.
• Leaders and staff have a clear vision of what they want children to learn. They plan a broad curriculum, which follows children's interests. Staff provide children with a balance of free play and adult-led activities. They use observation and ongoing assessments to highlight what children know already and need to learn next. However, some staff do not make the best use of this information to consistently extend all children's learning and potential.
• Parent partnership is well established. Parents highly commend the staff for promoting children's care and learning. They are impressed with the staff's personalised approach. Parents say that receiving online updates is their 'favourite part of the day'. They are well informed of their children's progress and given ideas to support them at home. Parents comment that their children's learning has 'exploded'.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen monitoring of staff's practice to identify their individual training needs more precisely and help raise the quality of teaching to a consistently high level
• build on staff's teaching strategies even further to allow all children sufficient time to respond more thoughtfully to questions in their own time
• support individual staff to plan activities based on their knowledge of what children know already and can achieve next to ensure that children reach their full potential.