Earlyworld Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders place children's well-being at the heart of their curriculum and teaching. This includes focusing on ensuring children feel happy, safe, secure and form trusting bonds with staff. This supports children to be emotionally ready to learn and motivated to play so all children can make good progress. For example, the arrangements for new children ensure that staff have comprehensive information about each child. Staff work closely with parents from the onset. Leaders provide children with beneficial settling in sessions to familiarise themselves with the staff, nursery and learn to manage separation from their parents. Staff sensitively support babies as they experience the various daily routines and are skilled in easing the transition into nursery life. They follow supportive arrangements to provide continuity for children when they move to the next room. This includes preparing children for changes, such as the arrangements at mealtimes.

Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour and children behave well. They understand about staff's expectations as they play indoors, outdoors and travel around the nursery. Mealtimes are a social occasion where conversation flows and children display good manners. For example, staff make good use of daily routines to help children to learn about keeping themselves healthy. Pre-school children discuss their favourite fruit and consider whether the skin of the fruit is edible or not.

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

• Overall, leaders reflect well on the service they provide. They value the views of parents and where possible take action to implement any suggestions they make. Leaders currently have plans to enhance the provision for children's outdoor play experiences.
• Leaders ensure that all staff have regular opportunities to complete ongoing professional development. Recent training has focused on the provision for children's communication development and extending staffs' knowledge to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff feel well supported and share how leaders support their well-being. This contributes to high levels of staff retention.
• Leaders routinely observe staff and provide them with guidance to extend their good practice further. Overall, teaching is strong and staff promote children's learning successfully. However, the monitoring of staff practice is not as rigorous as possible to identify where staff need further support to consistently provide children with the highest quality of teaching.
• Parent partnership working is strong. Leaders ensure that staff and parents engage in daily and regular in-depth dialogue about the progress their children are making. Staff share ideas with parents to help them support children's continued learning at home, such as managing behaviour, oral hygiene routines and taking their first steps. Parents state how staff are 'amazing' and how children have had very positive bonds with all key persons they have.
• Leaders have much thought to the curriculum they have designed. It is unique to the nursery and needs of the children. Overall, the curriculum shows progression and staff use it to inform their teaching. However, leaders have not identified that some aspects of the curriculum need to be sequenced more precisely and provide greater coverage across the three main areas of learning.
• An effective key person system is in place. Each child has a member of staff who has an in-depth understanding of their personalities, care needs and learning requirements. Staff effectively observe children in their play, assess their progress and plan for their learning.
• Leaders ensure that children's progress is monitored closely and take swift action when children need additional support. They work with outside agencies to implement children's personalised learning programmes.
• Staff create play environments that engage children well in their learning. Outdoors, children enjoy playing group games and access equipment that supports them to build their physical strength. Pre-school children enthusiastically make carrot soup using the vegetables they have grown.
• Leaders make good use of additional funding to help the children it is intended for. For example, they have created a sensory room with the aim of creating calm spaces to support children with their emotional regulation. Staff working with pre-school children provide opportunities for children to develop strategies that support their emotional regulation, such as breathing techniques.
• Staff are skilled in helping children to develop their social skills and have positive interactions with others. For example, they help babies to manage playing alongside another baby. Toddlers enjoy playing with their friends and develop their own games, such as peek-a-boo. They learn to share and take turns.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• refine the curriculum to identify a precise sequence of knowledge, skills and coverage across all key learning areas for children
• extend the monitoring of staff practice to provide children with consistently focused and high-quality learning experiences.