Dolly and Bear Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children settle quickly on arrival and are happy to say goodbye to their parents at the front door. They go into their rooms with staff to find their friends and see what activities are available. Babies enjoy lots of opportunities to explore their surroundings, including using their hands to experience different textures and lots of messy play. This helps them to develop important basic skills, such as hand-to-eye coordination to support the next stage in their learning. Children behave well. Pre-school children sit quietly during group activities, waiting patiently for their turn. They listen to their friend's choice of song and join in with the words and actions enthusiastically.

Toddlers enjoy playing with a range of natural objects, including coloured, dried rice and fresh vegetables. Staff provide further resources, such as wooden animals along with a story book, to encourage children to use their developing imaginative skills. Children pretend to feed the animals with the food, mimicking staff's actions as they play. Children thrive in the nursery, making good progress in their learning. Staff have high expectations for what children can achieve and are full of praise when children successfully master a new skill.

Children have lots of opportunities to play outside. The manager and staff have made the most out of the space available to encourage children to develop a range of skills, including balancing, measuring and using different materials such as sand and plastic dinosaurs imaginatively.

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

• The current manager has worked extremely hard to meet the legal requirements and improve the educational opportunities for children. A new staff team is in place and share the manager's enthusiasm for providing children with a fun, stimulating environment. This helps children to develop the necessary skills to be ready for the next stage in their learning, and school when the time comes.
• Staff find out what children know and can do when they start. They take time to observe and assess children's learning constantly, which helps them to implement educational programmes that are suitably challenging for children. Staff encourage and support children to extend and consolidate their knowledge before moving them on to the next steps in their learning.
• Staff note down children's interests as they develop. However, they do not make the most of children's current interests to capture their fascination and excitement and use it to encourage their learning and development further at that time.
• Children are encouraged from an early age to develop confidence in their own skills. For example, babies enjoy learning to feed themselves and toddlers learn to carefully take their plates and cutlery from the table to the bowls before sitting back down.
• Staff have found a range of ways to communicate with parents during the Covid- 19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Regular emails, social media and an online system helps staff to keep in touch with parents. Staff record children's achievements, learning and any messages about their key children daily. Parents log into the system at a convenient time. This helps parents and staff to work together, particularly as parents are unable to come into the nursery at present.
• Staff work well with other professionals to help support children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those who receive funding. Resources to help support children's learning are carefully chosen to develop their existing skills and challenge them further. Regular monitoring of children's achievements helps staff to identify quickly children who need additional support to close any emerging gaps in their learning. Staff help children catch up, working closely with other professionals, such as speech and language specialists to provide targeted support.
• The manager spends time with each of her team providing support, guidance and a wide range of training opportunities. Regular supervision meetings help staff to identify any weaknesses in their practice or areas they wish to develop further. 'Wellness Wednesday's' provide light relief for staff as the manager focuses on staff's well-being and mental health.
• Children are, generally, really confident and express their thoughts and ideas freely with staff and their friends. Sometimes, though, staff overlook the less confident children, as those who are louder and more confident lead the discussions and activities.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• consider ways to help children who are less confident to take part in activities and discussions
• make greater use of children's emerging interests to develop their learning further.