Ducklings Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are eager and happy to attend this welcoming, friendly nursery. The manager ensures that staff provide meaningful experiences that excite and motivate children to learn. For instance, staff use careful questioning to challenge older children to think and solve problems. Children clamour to tell staff their ideas, such as about what tools they need to create a building when playing with blocks. Children have a positive attitude to learning. They behave sensibly because of staff's skilful support and role modelling of positive behaviours. Children remember the nursery's rules about how to behave.

Staff help children and babies to settle well at the nursery. They focus on creating secure relationships to support children's well-being and happiness. Babies explore the nursery resources with confidence, supported by skilful, gentle staff. Two-year-olds delight in listening to familiar stories that staff read aloud with skill. Staff help children's learning expertly, such as when they pretend to be a character from a story that children have recently learned. Children adore copying staff and acting out the roles of their favourite characters. This helps children to remember key information. They are ready for their next stage in their learning.

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

• The manager has devised an ambitious curriculum for all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. For example, she has ensured that staff are highly trained to support children's communication and personal development. Children gain a successful start to their education.
• Mostly, the curriculum is well thought out. This means, for example, that children build a secure knowledge of key mathematical concepts such as long and short. However, the manager has not applied the same careful curriculum thinking to what children need to know in some aspects of literacy and physical development. This means that, on occasion, staff do not help children to build on their previous learning.
• Staff have genuine conversations with children. They are deeply interested in what children wish to say. Staff help younger children to learn new words in meaningful ways, such as through lots of songs and conversation. Children develop a wide vocabulary and learn to communicate with other people.
• Staff help children to gain important knowledge about books. Staff read books to children repeatedly and skilfully. Children adore discussing their thoughts with staff about what might happen next in a story. They learn about the importance of characters, themes and plots in stories.
• Staff promote children's physical development successfully. They provide space for babies to learn how to move their bodies confidently. Older children use their big muscles to climb to the top of the large outdoor climbing frame encouraged by staff. Children develop their strength, coordination and stamina.
• Staff working with babies provide them with an excellent standard of care and nurture. They spend time getting to know babies' interests and current experiences at home. Following a recent visit to a farm, staff helped babies to remember their experiences. They provided toy farm animals and books to help children to learn animal sounds. Babies become happy, confident learners.
• Staff have high expectation of how children should behave. They set up meaningful activities to help children to play together, such as when pretending to go shopping. Staff gently support children who may need extra support to learn not to snatch toys. They help children to practise using their words to ask for a turn of a toy. Children are beginning to learn about the boundaries for behaviour.
• The manager and staff help children to learn that they are unique. They help children to understand that their views are important. They ask children to make a vote with a show of hands, on which book should be read aloud. Children learn how to share their opinions and to respect the views of others.
• Staff have important conversations with children about choosing healthy lifestyles. They help children to carefully brush their teeth every day at nursery. Children have plenty of opportunities to be physically active, including learning outdoors daily. They gain important knowledge about how to be well and healthy.
• The manager uses additional funding well to enhance children's learning. For instance, she recently used this funding to arrange for staff to take children by bus to visit people at a local nursing home. The children shared snack and sang nursery rhymes with the residents. Children build their confidence and self esteem to try new experiences.
• The manager works skilfully alongside staff to guide and support the improvement of their work. She matches the quality of staff's practice with coaching and professional development opportunities. This enables staff to implement the manager's curriculum ably.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the curriculum in physical development and literacy so that staff are clear what key information children should learn and how this links to what children already know.