Charnwood Forest Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at the nursery with their parents or carers and are eager to enter. Staff are warm and welcoming, and they develop positive relationships with children and their families. This helps children to be happy and confident. They walk in and hang their belongings up. Staff know their children well and identify children who may need additional support promptly. Staff adapt activities to ensure children have equal access to the learning experiences.

Children have positive attitudes to learning and engage in activities for prolonged periods. The staff's calm and caring nature supports children to understand what is expected of them, and children behave well. For example, when a child attempts to tip his drink from one cup to another, staff approach this calmly, telling the child it is to drink. The child becomes frustrated, but even when they go to reach to tip it again, they manage to stop themselves.

Children are supported to develop skills towards independence. For example, staff give younger children wipes to wash their own faces after breakfast and they give instructions and actions for children to copy. Older children go to the toilet, are supported to pour their own drinks and feed themselves. Children are proud of their achievements. For example, when children finish drawing pictures, they take them over to staff and show them excitedly, and then put them in their bags to take home.

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

• Staff and managers have a strong understanding of child development and how children learn. They plan their environments and activities to support children's readiness towards their next stages of learning, including for children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and those who speak English as an additional language.
• Staff promote children's communication and language and offer children new language. They comment, repeat language and ask children questions. Staff use signs and actions to accompany their communication. For example, staff show children how to push a brick on top of another and say, 'push, push,' as the child attempts the task. Staff repeat sounds children make and add additional sounds that are age appropriate for the children. Children are encouraged by staff to sing at group times. They choose songs titles out of a bag and sing loudly all together.
• Staff support children to understand the emotions they feel. Staff have created a space for children to use when they are finding self-regulation difficult. They support children by commenting on the emotions they are feeling and being there with them, until they have calmed down.
• Children are supported to develop mathematically. Staff introduce mathematical language to children's play. For example, children build a tower, and staff ask children to find 'two more' bricks. Staff encourage children to describe the bricks, using size, amounts and quantities.
• Children develop their physical skills supported by staff. For example, inside, children use paint brushes, pens and pencils to make marks on paper. Outside, children balance, swing, slide and climb on equipment, supported by staff. They ride scooters, fill and empty buckets with water and enjoy using brushes to sweep away puddles with staff.
• Parents are happy with the nursery. They say that the staff communicate with them regularly through conversations as well as the online app. They add they know what their child's next steps are and they are supported to extend their children's learning at home. For example, staff send books home for parents to read with their children, to help to develop communication. Parents comment on their children's happiness and would recommend the nursery to other families.
• Staff say that they feel supported by their team and managers. They add they have regular meetings when they can share both personal and work-related issues, if they have any. Managers hold supervisions to review staff performance, as well as checking their ongoing suitability to work with children.
• Staff interact well with most children. They join in with the children's interests and extend the learning experiences children have. However, this is not consistent. Less-confident children do not always benefit from the same prolonged interactions with staff.
• Children's health and hygiene is generally supported by staff. Children wash their hands before eating and after using the toilet. They enjoy a range of healthy food items throughout the day. However, staff do not help children to understand the difference between time for play and mealtimes. As a result, at breakfast time, children sit down to self-serve their fruit and bread. However, while they do this, other children bring over food they have been playing with. They place it on the breakfast plates that other children are eating from.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to find more ways to consistently engage with quieter children, to enable them to get the most out of learning experiences
• support children to learn what is expected at mealtimes and the difference between mealtime and playtime.