Cybertots On The Green

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders and staff have strong relationships with families and children. The well-established key-person system helps all children to form strong and secure attachments. Leaders have put in place a well-designed curriculum, which carefully considers the current cohort of children's needs, including those who speak English as an additional language. Staff use regular observations and assessments to identify what children need to learn next. This helps them to identify children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and provide tailored support for them. This means that all children make good progress from their starting points.

Staff provide consistent praise and encouragement, which motivates children to participate in activities and share what they are doing with their peers and other adults. Staff model positive language to support children to persevere when activities are challenging. Additionally, staff encourage children to recognise and understand their own feelings. This helps to develop children's positive self-esteem and supports them to be respectful to others.

Leaders understand the importance of keeping children safe and secure. They have taken appropriate steps to address previous actions. For example, leaders and staff have attended relevant training and are confident with the improvements and changes made to policies and procedures to safeguard children.

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

• Leaders and staff provide a well-sequenced curriculum for all children. They assess children's starting points carefully and plan activities to enable them to make progress in their development, including children with additional needs.
• The curriculum places an importance on children learning about different emotions from an early age. For example, staff ask children how they are feeling and encourage them to ask their peers. This helps children to understand their own feelings and the importance of considering other's feelings in play.
• Staff make good use of routines to help children to become increasingly independent. For example, young children help to tidy up when they hear the 'tidy up' song and then wash their hands before snack. Toddlers start to manage putting on and taking off their coats, when moving between indoors and outdoors. Older children clear the table after mealtimes and cut their own fruit. This demonstrates that children are clear on the behavioural expectations and that staff prepare them well for their next stage in their learning journey.
• Staff use a range of ways to build on children's language and communication skills. For example, they sing to children while modelling actions from familiar songs and they use large-group times to involve children in discussions around books. However, teaching is not always targeted to meet all children's individual learning needs during these group sessions.
• Outdoors, children practise large physical movements and take risks in a safe and welcoming space. Staff narrate and praise younger children as they have a go at climbing up to go down the slide and older children navigate space well or balance on climbing frames with staff nearby. Children develop confidence in their own abilities.
• Mathematics is carefully woven into everyday routines and interactions. For example, pre-school children use their fingers to represent numbers in different ways and they count how many more bowls they need while laying the table for their peers. This means children are gaining an understanding of early mathematical concepts.
• Staff work closely with parents to meet children's individual needs. Parents comment positively on the progress their children are making. They feel well informed and receive ideas of how they can support their child's learning at home. For example, when children are ready, staff work closely with parents to support them and their child with toilet training. Parents can attend workshops and are given books to read to their child to help to create consistency between home and nursery.
• Staff comment they feel supported in periods of change. For example, they have attended training to develop their knowledge and improve standards. They share learning with each other and leaders monitor their progress through regular one- to-one meetings and observations.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop group activities to meet the needs and abilities for all children.