Capital City College Finsbury Park Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thoroughly enjoy their time at the nursery. They take part in activities, such as self-registration when they arrive and they identify their 'ID card' with their parents. This helps them to feel a sense of belonging. Children separate from their parents with ease and are eager to enter the room to see what activities are on offer. Children are warmly welcomed by friendly staff, who help them to settle with their chosen activity. They build strong bonds with adults and feel safe and secure. Children behave well and have positive attitudes to learning. They follow 'golden rules', which helps them to be kind and respect each other. Staff act as positive role models. They provide lots of praise and encouragement, which helps to raise children's self-esteem and confidence.

The leader and staff place a clear overall focus on improving children's communication skills. They share a range of songs and rhymes throughout the day as they recognise children learn new words rapidly through these. For instance, children are welcomed with a 'train song' at circle time, and staff sing for children during nappy changing time. They add actions and sing faster to make singing time more fun for children. Staff use strategies consistently and effectively. As a result, children including those who speak English as an additional language, make good progress.

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

• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are effectively supported. Staff work collaboratively with outside professionals, other settings and parents. Meetings take place to discuss appropriate strategies and specific targets for individual children. This helps them to utilise their expertise, to help children to reach their full potential. Staff make adaptations to their practice to ensure that children with SEND have equal opportunities to participate in all activities.
• Staff accurately assess what children know and can do. They plan exciting learning experiences based on children's interest and needs, so that children develop a sense of awe and wonder. For example, when children had a huge interest in butterflies, staff brought a caterpillar into the nursery for children to observe how changes happen. Children thoroughly enjoyed this invaluable experience, which sparked them to love reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' book even more.
• The passionate manager works closely with the staff team. She is reflective about the strengths and areas for development within the setting and shares her ambitious plans for improvement in group supervision sessions. Staff regularly and individually meet with the manager to discuss children's progress, staff development and well-being. Staff say that they feel well supported.
• Overall, children's independence and self-care skills are well supported. For example, children wash their hands before mealtimes and learn how to tidy up. However, they are not always given the opportunities to practise these skills throughout the day. Staff often carry out tasks for children, which they would benefit from attempting themselves, such as getting their coat and pouring their drinks.
• Partnership with parents is good. Parents speak highly of the staff team. They say their children are happy to come to the nursery and see the progress in their learning. Staff regularly update 'my special book' for each child. This contains a variety of photos and comments of children's experiences for parents to see. They provide parents with information and resources to support child's learning at home and parents appreciate this. For instance, staff provided tomato planting sets for children to take home. They enjoyed observing how a tomato grows with their parents.
• Staff's interactions are warm and responsive. They help children to develop their communication and language skills. For example, during cornflour play, younger children enjoy learning key words and name of colours while older children listen to staff instructions attentively and comment on what is happening. Staff skilfully model language, explaining what they are doing and ask children relevant questions. However, at times, children are not given enough time to respond to the questions that staff ask. Children are not always able to process what is being asked of them, think and process information, and share their thoughts and ideas.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff develop children's communication and language skills further by allowing them more time to process language and respond to questions
• increase opportunities for children to develop their independence during daily tasks and self-care routines.