Butterflies Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and free to explore their learning environment securely. Children of mixed ages play well together in a calm atmosphere. Older children are confident, they know the routine and what is expected of them. They demonstrate good behaviours and show kindness towards their peers. Children care about each other.

Younger children can confidently link sounds to objects. They know that a police car sounds a siren and what noise a sheep makes. Staff encourage children to copy sounds and echo these sounds back to them. Children smile and laugh when staff make farm noises and sing songs. They move their whole bodies in response to a song and they like to dance. Relationships between staff and children are respectful. Children are confident learners because of positive interactions. The curriculum design supports younger children to make choices and decisions based on what they need. Younger children care for their peers and assist them when they need a helping hand. Children are confident to express themselves through language and play.

Staff have high expectations for every child. They plan experiences to enhance children's curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Older children test out ideas, tipping and pouring rice into the weighing scales. Children identify which side is heavier and use words, such as 'even', when the scales balance. Children practise turn-taking skills with their peers, giving each other time to problem solve and build confidence. They show high levels of engagement and excitement as they gasp with anticipation to see if the scales balance.

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

• Leaders and managers carefully consider the needs of all children when deploying staff. They offer children one-to-one support to focus on needed skills children must acquire for good behaviour management. They act appropriately and assess the need for intervention. There are secure arrangements in place to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• Relationships between staff and children are kind and caring. Children are curious and enjoy the experiences their key people create for them. Staff ensure that younger children lead their own learning experiences and learn at their own pace. Younger children look surprised after placing their hands into a tray of glitter. They are enthusiastic to share their experience with their peers, showing the glitter on their hands. However, at times, staff are too quick to do things for older children. Older children need more opportunities to develop their independence skills to help prepare them for their future learning.
• Leaders and managers provide flexible childcare sessions, which consider the needs of the families in the community. Parents say that the nursery is 'great' because staff support children to settle in well and are flexible with sessions they provide. Leaders and managers carefully consider the childcare they offer and the impact it has on children. They identify the need for a strong key-person system, using a second key person to ensure children always have a named member of staff to meet their individual needs.
• Managers and leaders have robust procedures in place to ensure communication between key staff is strong. Staff benefit from regular room meetings and supervisions, where they talk about what children can do and what they need to learn next. Staff have time to reflect on children's learning and feed improvements into future planning and assessments.
• Parent partnership is strong. Staff work hard to understand all children's starting points. They know individual children's needs and interests and use these to plan next steps for learning. Parents say that their children's needs are highly met while at nursery. They know this because they receive good communication about their child and children make good progress.
• Children develop a good range of skills across all areas of learning within a well-planned learning environment. Staff use stories and songs to promote children's interests. Staff consider which books and songs will enhance children's experiences to build further knowledge of a subject being taught. Staff use mathematical language during the daily routine. Older children clap and count, 'one, two, three, four' to show that it is the fourth day of the week. Children identify which dinosaur is 'big' and which one is 'bigger'.
• Staff working with younger children promote their communication and language skills well. For example, they know that when a child uses single words they are to model language and add extra words into the sentence. This helps children to build on the number of words they have in their vocabulary. However, for older children staff do not always extend children's language experiences. At times. older children have too many questions directed at them with little staff language returned to help extend children's vocabulary.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on staff's understanding of how to extend children's developing independence
• build on staff's practice of how to help older children to develop a wide and varied vocabulary.