Child First Aylesbury Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff are introducing a new and ambitious curriculum. This helps to provide children with enjoyable experiences that excite and stimulate them. Children show a great sense of enjoyment in their play. Babies smile broadly and babble, while older children move with purpose and confidence. Staff demonstrate a good awareness of children's growth and development. They know what contributes towards children's good physical progress and recognise that children need to build core strength, such as by babies spending time lying on their tummies. Staff help older children to climb, balance and make use of equipment to promote their coordination and spatial awareness. When children need extra help with their physical development, staff put plans in place to ensure that they have ample opportunities to strengthen their muscles.

Support from staff is good and all children are achieving well, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Older children show their expertise and sophisticated vocabulary when they talk with adults. When playing with a jigsaw puzzle, they correct adults when they mistake an alligator for a crocodile. This shows the confidence they have in their knowledge and their good ability to talk about things that interest them.

Staff give children clear guidance and support their personal, social and emotional development well. This helps children to learn about expected behaviour and creates an environment where children play in safety.

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

• The manager has a good understanding about how young children acquire speech. As a result, staff focus on repetition of familiar songs and stories so that children hear key words. Staff use traditional nursery rhymes to help young children copy words and build on their vocabulary. Young children excitedly recite rhymes from memory and enjoy copying actions. Children look at books together and can identify characters and phrases. They know the rhythm of text and repeat this as they turn the pages of the book, showing their developing awareness that words carry meaning.
• The manager has introduced a new curriculum. Generally, staff know what they want children to learn. However, as the curriculum intentions are new and staff have recently changed the rooms where they work, at times they are not fully confident to put the curriculum into action. Furthermore, the manager has yet to have time to fully monitor the impact of the curriculum on children's development.
• The special educational needs and/or disability coordinator (SENCo), is highly knowledgeable and works effectively to ensure that all children achieve a good level of development at the nursery. Along with the staff team, the SENCo helps support children as they experience changes, such as moves between rooms or on to the next setting. This helps children to experience consistency in their care and education.
• The young children who attend the nursery explore their strong impulse to learn through using all their senses. Staff understand the importance of encouraging children to touch, taste and encounter new experiences in a safe manner. Children get great pleasure from filling containers with water and sand and mixing different media together to find out what happens.
• Key persons build close relationships with children and their families. This is highly beneficial for helping children to settle into the nursery, particularly for the youngest children. Staff in the baby room make sure that they know all about children's home routines so that they can replicate these at the nursery. In doing so, children follow familiar patterns for feeding and sleeping that help them to feel safe and content.
• There have been several changes to management at the nursery over a short period of time. The new manager is an exceptional leader, who manages the nursery with calm confidence. This is beginning to have a significant positive impact upon the quality of the care and education provided for children.
• Staff now have robust support and supervision sessions. The manager praises their good work and ensures that they can reflect on their own performance and undertake training to enhance their skills. Parents say that they feel well-informed about their child's progress and feel reassured that children are happy and content.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• increase staff's confidence in delivering the curriculum so that they can reliably build on what children already know to fully maximise their learning.