Coundon Kidz Club Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children, including those who attend the breakfast club and wrap around nursery provision, are active and busy in this safe and familiar environment. Children are eager to sing their morning greeting song and help count the counters they have used to vote for the book of the day. The Queen's Jubilee theme is creatively threaded through all activities and helps to motivate children to learn. For example, children are inspired by photographs of crowns and are deeply engaged in making their own creations at the 'dough station'. Others are intrigued as they use cotton buds with red, white and blue paint to write, make marks and explore how many new colours they can create.

The younger children are equally as eager to join in activities, and staff place a clear priority on increasing their language development. Children increase their self-help skills as they make their sandwiches for their party and talk about foods they like in their lunchboxes. They thoroughly enjoy exploring and investigating at their own leisure and staff sensitively join in their play to teach children. For example, children are introduced to new vocabulary and hear a rich range of language as they play with the water and coloured rice. Children are happy, confident and behave well, and thoroughly enjoy their time at the nursery.

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

• The nominated individual is also the nursery teacher at the on-site school nursery that the vast majority of children attend part time and also move on to. She works extremely closely with the manager and staff to provide a coherently planned educational programme. The prime focus is to ensure what they provide complements children's time at the school nursery and prepares the youngest children with the skills they need when they first start. They use the school nursery curriculum as a base and combine children's interests and their observations of what children like doing. This helps them to provide a rich learning environment, which quickly captures children's curiosity.
• The committed staff are enthusiastic about children's learning and know their assigned key children well. The manager has a good overview of the nursery and staff practice. Staff benefit from regular supervision and training to keep their knowledge up to date and to help build on their teaching skills. Staff speak positively about the support, guidance and coaching they receive.
• Staff work extremely well with parents from the start to swiftly identify any children who need additional support, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). They work very closely with parents and make timely referrals to external professionals to access the support these children need. Staff provide good, targeted interventions to help SEND children to take part in and begin to close gaps in their learning. However, on occasions when other children join in, staff concentrate too much on the most vocal and confident children and this interrupts the play and learning of children with SEND.
• Staff know children and their families extremely well. This is further strengthened by the strong systems in place of sharing information with school staff. Consequently, those families who need it most are supported by staff extremely well on issues such as behaviour management, sleep routines and eating habits. Parents report that they are extremely impressed by the close relationship staff have with their children and the range of activities on offer.
• Promoting children's health and well-being is a clear priority. Staff are inclusive and ensure all children enjoy and are able to take part in physical activity. For example, staff provide a range of challenging physical play equipment daily, along with yoga and zumba sessions to help appeal to all children. They work closely with children and their parents to teach them about the benefits of having a healthy packed lunch and limiting sugar in their diet.
• Staff skilfully use books to reinforce what they are teaching and children show a real fondness for story sessions. They thoroughly enjoy literacy activities as they write and make marks and learn to recognise their names. Staff support children well to count, and girls in particular enjoy mathematical activities. However, boys do not always show a keen interest in the mathematical activities provided and their achievement is not as high as the girls in this area.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the system for children with SEND so that these children can play and learn without interruption from others
• provide a rich range of mathematical activities that appeal to boys, to help raise their level of achievement.