Children 1st @ Leek

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show that they feel safe and happy in the well-organised, welcoming provision. Staff promote and sequence children's physical development well. Babies become fascinated with tipping a big wooden bowl. The bowl's satisfyingly noisy wobble helps to maintain children's interest and they repeat the movements. Older babies meet further challenge. They work hard to climb up steps to the top of the little slide. Staff gently encourage and help them to descend. This promotes children's sense of achievement and motivation. Children eagerly participate in short sessions of yoga. This helps them to gain increasing control of their movements. Staff have high expectations for children's learning. Children make good progress from their starting points.

Staff gave support to parents whose children were absent from nursery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and carers comment that staff worked to ensure that nursery felt normal when children returned. In addition, staff liaised with parents to reassess children's development and establish fresh starting points for their learning. This all helped to promote continuity for children's care and education. Staff create a purposeful and cheerful atmosphere in the nursery. Children learn to take turns and share resources during activities. For example, pre-school children politely ask each other to pass the colour of paint that they need.

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

• Leaders and managers identify strengths and areas for development in the provision's practice. Staff feel supported to improve their professional skills and knowledge. However, managers sometimes do not pay really close attention to the detail of staff's interactions with children. Targets to help staff improve their teaching lack precision. This slows staff's progress towards achieving the highest quality of teaching that promotes children's swiftest progress.
• Staff support children to understand their feelings. This is exemplified well, for example, when children experience feelings of frustration. Staff help children to identify their emotions and find solutions to problems. They talk with children about what made them feel cross and what to do next time they have those feelings. Children, therefore, begin to control and manage their emotions as they grow.
• Some two-year-old children successfully stand on one leg during a yoga session. Other children, despite trying really hard, find it too difficult to do this. They solve the problem by placing their hands on a low surface to complete the move. This demonstrates children's capacity to think and find solutions. All of the children work towards developing their balance and core strength.
• Staff promote children's spontaneous learning well. They help pre-school children to carefully capture a spider and a rich conversation develops. Staff make skilful use of a reference book to extend children's knowledge. Children become confident to ask questions. They ask staff, 'how do you know spiders have hairy legs?' Staff return to the page in the book where they read the new fact. This teaches children that books give them useful information.
• Staff sequence children's learning as part of daily routines. Younger children progress from using one, then two pieces of cutlery at mealtimes. Older children learn to use knives and forks. Pre-school children demonstrate their ability to initiate and develop self-chosen play, individually and in groups. Children are ready to start school confidently when the time comes.
• Staff continuously help children to extend their vocabulary. Babies hear and begin to use words that match their actions, such as 'wheee' as they descend the slide. Pre-school children enthusiastically cooperate to create a car from a huge cardboard box. The activity helps them to learn and apply words such as 'indicator' and 'dashboard'.
• Staff make effective use of assessment to check and promote children's development. When children's progress gives cause for concern, staff consult with parents. Staff plan and implement programmes of intervention effectively. This enables staff to seek timely advice from specialist professionals. Children in receipt of additional funding are supported well. Gaps in children's development and progress close steadily.
• Parents say that staff's written and spoken communication with them is a strength of the provision. They comment that staff are knowledgeable and respond sensitively to any concerns that parents share with them.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• pay closer attention to the detail of staff's interactions with children, so that targets for staff's development show precisely what they need to do to improve their teaching.