Cornfields Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children feel safe and thrive in the nursery through individualised support from very skilled and experienced staff. The curriculum is challenging and well thought out to ensure all children make rapid progress from their starting points. High-quality interactions from staff encourage children to be curious and inquisitive learners. This also helps to build children's confidence and promotes their self-esteem.

Staff take great note of what motivates the children and captures their interest. From a young age, many of the children are fascinated by the different vehicles they see come and go from the builder's yard. The children watch as the forklift trucks pass the window, and they listen to the different sounds they make. In the baby room, staff put together an area with different toy trucks and simple construction toys, as well as picture books to refer to with the different vehicles. The children make connections with what is going on outside, as they point excitedly at what they see.

Staff manage the transitions throughout the nursery well to ensure children continue to feel confident and supported. Timely interventions ensure children with special education needs and/or disabilities get the support they need. The best use of funding is carefully considered to ensure the best outcomes for children. Focused activities in quieter areas of the nursery allow staff to provide intensive, targeted support to meet children's needs.

Children behave well and staff support them to learn about emotions and feelings and how their behaviour can affect others around them. Staff also plan a range of activities that actively encourage children to talk about and recognise their feelings.

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

• Staff provide a rich language environment and engage children in ongoing dialogue, valuing children's time to talk and listening well to them. Staff broaden children's vocabulary, introducing them to new words and their meaning. Staff build children's confidence to talk in groups, and in pre-school children take turns to lead yoga sessions.
• Mathematical language and counting are skilfully interwoven into children's play and daily routines. For example, at snack times, numbers positioned in snack bowls show the children the number of pear slices they can have. During construction activities, children count the number of bricks tall they are and compare how many bricks taller they are than their friends. They predict how many they will need to reach their height and talk about who is the tallest and by how many bricks.
• Children learn how to use a range of tools safely and develop their hand strength. The introduction of 'finger gym stations' includes activities like threading and weaving, using tweezers to transport items and manipulating dough. This all helps children to develop their control and coordination, useful skills needed for their transitions to school.
• Staff deployment is mostly effective and they know the children's capabilities well. Staff sit with the children at lunchtime and it is a very social occasion, although staff are not always mindful of positioning themselves closer to older children who are less inclined to ask for help but may need it.
• Staff widen children's experiences as they take them out in the local community. They visit local greengrocers to buy fruit for their snack and learn about healthy eating. They visit the local recycling station and sort different items, learning about what happens to these and the different items they can be made into.
• Staff invest heavily in partnerships with parents and carers. Staff take time to really get to know children when they first start and find out where they are in their learning journey so they can plan their next steps in learning. Staff provide parents with detailed feedback on their children's development and encourage them to be actively involved in the nursery and curriculum planning. Learning bags are available for parents to take home and include story sacks, songs and rhymes and yoga movements to do with their children.
• While the provider has a robust range of policies and procedures in place, these are not always revisited when changes are made to the environment. For example, when a fridge was relocated from a higher position to a lower one, risk assessments were not reconsidered to ensure they still remained effective in terms of safe storage of items. Although, when brought to the manager's attention it was immediately dealt with and supervision was such that no children were unsupervised in this area.
• Leaders place a strong emphasis on supporting the professional development and well-being of staff. Leaders encourage staff to reflect on their practice and the experiences they offer to children. Staff attend regular training to continuously build on their knowledge and skills to ensure they can provide high-quality learning experiences for children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consider how best to effectively deploy staff, at lunchtimes, to assist those children that are less inclined to ask for help
• ensure when any changes are made to the nursery environment, risk assessments are revisited to ensure they still remain effective.