Daisy Fays Chiverton

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are greeted by staff that know them and their families very well. This is a happy nursery, where staff create a welcoming environment and support children to learn through their play. Children are excited to join in with the interesting activities that staff carefully plan for them. For example, staff freeze water with paint and sequins to make special ice cubes for young children to explore and make marks. Staff cheerfully talk about what the children are doing and skilfully encourage them to experiment with the melting ice cubes in different ways. This helps children to develop a good range of important skills.

Children show through their behaviour that they feel safe and secure in the nursery. Pre-school children use their manners well and show kindness towards each other. Babies and toddlers enjoy close relationships with staff, and affection is readily given and received. Staff place a strong emphasis on helping children to develop their social and emotional skills effectively. Staff have high expectations, and they set appropriate challenges for children to assist their individual progress. Managers and staff are keen to ensure their curriculum evolves and changes. Children are supported well to become confident, happy and social, with a wide breadth of knowledge about the world around them.

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

• The owners actively promote the well-being of management and staff. They ask for recommendations for improvement and readily act on suggestions made. This helps to maintain good working relationships. There is a shared ethos to provide the best care and education they can for all children.
• The dedicated and passionate manager has a good understanding of what she wants children to learn. The recently introduced curriculum builds on what children already know, understand and can do. The manager supports staff to build their confidence on how best to use their skills to teach the children. As a result, staff are developing their understanding of the new curriculum. However, the changes are not yet fully embedded to ensure all staff consistently demonstrate high-quality teaching.
• Staff assist children well through times of change, such as when starting at the nursery and moving on to a new room. Settling-in and transition plans are tailored to children's individual needs. However, for pre-school children, mealtimes are less well organised. This results in children wandering around the room to find where to sit and waiting too long for their food to be served or to be able to serve themselves.
• There is a strong focus to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff liaise with additional agencies when needed and put effective plans in place to identify individual targets. Additional funding is used well. As a result, children, including children with SEND, make very good progress.
• Parents speak highly of the nursery. They are very pleased with the progress that their children make. Parents report the staff are friendly, and there is always time to talk about anything they may need to regarding their children.
• Children have lots of opportunities to be active and develop their physical skills. For example, babies enjoy splashing water and building with blocks. Toddlers enthusiastically paint the fence with water and are keen to stretch up high to make the water drip down the wood. Pre-school children show high levels of coordination and balance as they eagerly walk across the assault course they have made from wooden planks, tyres and plastic crates.
• Staff use very good questioning to expand on children's understanding and critical thinking skills. For example, children enjoy exploring why different objects float or sink. Children show good knowledge and recall previous learning and vocabulary. Children repeat activities for practise and remember the new skills they have learned.
• Staff prepare pre-school children for transitioning to school effectively. They provide school uniform clothing as part of the dressing-up options in the role-play area to develop their independence skills. The manager invites parents to attend meetings to find out more about school readiness. She promotes effective liaison with local schools.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• further strengthen the support for staff to embed the changes of the curriculum to promote consistently high-quality teaching
• review and improve mealtime routines for pre-school children to help them find where to sit and to reduce their waiting time for their food to be served, or to be able to serve themselves.