Crowgate Child Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at the setting happy and settle well. They engage in activities and are confident to explore. Staff are warm and welcoming and provide reassurance and comfort, when needed. This helps children feel safe and secure within the nursery environment.

Children enjoy a wide range of stimulating resources and activities, both inside and outdoors. The child-led environment enables children to have open access to activities of their choice. This promotes their independence and raises their self-esteem. Outside, children show confidence as they use slides, bicycles and scooters. Others play in the mud kitchen; they enjoy picking herbs and add them to their 'cakes'. Inside, children further develop their skills. For example, they use their fine motor skills as they roll play dough into shapes and make pretend cakes in the role play area. Staff play alongside children and support their learning.

Children are kind and behave well. They show a growing awareness of sharing and playing with others. Staff role model good behaviour and children learn about boundaries and expectations. Staff recognise positive behaviour and praise children throughout the day. This helps to raise children's self-esteem and develops their confidence. Children understand the routines of the day and know what to expect next. This helps to prepare them for the next stage of their learning.

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

• Children's speech development is well supported. The environment is language rich. Staff narrate play and model good language throughout the day. Staff encourage children to sing songs and join in action games. Story time captives the children's interest. Staff read the story using excited tones and create anticipation. Children start to engage in conversations with staff and their peers. This helps to promote their social and communication skills.
• Staff support children's physical development well. The large outdoor area offers opportunity for children to move in a range of ways. For example, they use their leg muscles to push a scooter up a small hill. They then navigate around a corner before showing enjoyment as they scoot back down. They also climb steps on the slide and use fine motor skills in the sandpit and mud kitchen.
• Staff quickly take appropriate action to help support the children's emotional development, for example when children play alongside each other with dinosaurs during role play. As they pretend to stomp and roar, children say they feel 'scared'. Staff skilfully demonstrate to them how the dinosaurs play and care for each other. This supports children in developing skills to regulate their own emotions and those of others.
• Staff gather children's starting points from talking to parents. They also observe the children throughout the day, noting their interests. The curriculum engages the children well. However, the learning intention of activities and children's individual next steps are not clear. As a result, activities are not always challenging enough to support children to reach their full potential.
• Children learn about being healthy, and hygiene practices are good. They learn to wash their hands and they have healthy snacks and water throughout the day. Children bring their own packed lunch. Staff sit with the children to eat, creating a lovely social atmosphere.
• Parent partnership is good. Children leave parents and carers at the door and walk confidently into the setting. If children need extra help leaving parents, staff support them. Parents report that they get a verbal daily update of what their child has done each day. They also receive a termly progress report.
• Children look to staff for reassurance and have extra cuddles for support if needed. An effective key-person system helps children to feel secure. This promotes their well-being.
• Staff feed back to each other throughout the day regarding their performance. They also have the opportunity for supervision meetings. However, supervision is not targeted to identify any specific training requirements to meet staff's individual needs. As a result, training does not always improve staff's professional development sufficiently.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide more opportunities for staff supervision, to help identify training opportunities and build on their already good teaching skills
• help staff to gain more knowledge of how to provide challenging activities for children which have a clear intention and build on their next steps for learning.