Buttercups Children's Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children eagerly wave goodbye to their parents when greeted by the incredibly nurturing staff who know the children and parents so well. Staff provide an invaluable home visit and stay-and-play sessions before children start. Children's emotional well-being is at the forefront, which ensures they settle in smoothly alongside swiftly building trusting and secure relationships with staff. This cheerful home-from-home nursery with real-life resources offers a meaningful learning environment.

Staff are excellent role models, praising children when they show acts of kindness to their peers. Children play cooperatively. They respect the needs of others and enjoy using sand timers to negotiate turn taking.

Babies and children love the endless choice of stimulating play experiences and continuous access to outdoor play, including an imaginative forest garden. Children learn to test their physical limits and develop their resilience. With the right level of support from staff, they learn to access any risks in the environment independently. Children know that they need to step backwards, creating enough space for their peers, who relish gaining maximum momentum and height on the rope swing to go higher. Children gain confidence in their abilities from a very young age, which encourages a positive attitude to learning.

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

• Enhanced by a home visit, each child's key person gathers pertinent information to help them expertly plan the care and learning, tailored to children's individual needs. This early communication helps staff to get to know each child individually so that they make the best possible progress.
• The management team instigates effective partnership working with the host school and other professionals, such as speech and language therapists. This helps secure timely and relevant support for children now, and when they transition to school. As a result, all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make significant progress and continuously have their individual needs met.
• Babies and children benefit from a language-rich environment. Staff recognise the importance of reading to children to help foster their enjoyment of books. Children join in, confidently pointing to the characters or objects on the page as staff name them. This provides young children with further exposure to language and builds on their growing vocabulary.
• The highly reflective and dedicated managers provide training and support to staff, ensuring the curriculum intent and teaching is securely embedded throughout the nursery. Guided by children's lead, staff are responsive to their ideas, enabling children to feel empowered and test out their ideas in their own way. Occasionally, staff do not consistently re-direct children's play to help them to gain most from the rich learning experiences.
• Parents appreciate regular assessments of their child's progress with daily online and face-to-face communication. Staff teach effective coping strategies to support children when they feel overwhelmed or encounter difficulties and share these with parents. Parents report how this collaborative working is improving their child's behaviour and self-esteem, as children are independently using these techniques at home to self-regulate.
• Babies and children are becoming increasingly independent and develop life skills such cutting up food with a knife and fork. Staff patiently use gentle hand-over-hand guidance to support this learning. Children serve their own meals and learn to make healthy food choices. They understand how this contributes to their good health.
• Mealtimes are sociable events. Babies and young children eat together and demonstrate good table manners with positive role modelling from staff who sit alongside them. Sometimes, staff do not consistently reinforce messages with older children about the importance of sitting down when eating.
• Staff value children's individual characters. Children show high levels of self-esteem and the confidence to count to 60 for fun. Young children show their delight and enthusiasm as they learn through trial and error. Staff provide meaningful praise, encouraging children to keep trying as they attempt to successfully flip a pretend pancake.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to build on the already good interactions with children to help guide their play to ensure children gain the most from the rich learning experience
• guide staff in providing clear and consistent messages to older children about the importance of maintaining good eating habits.