Enchanted Day Nursery And Holiday Club

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children benefit from the warm and welcoming environment that staff create for them. Staff build close and positive relationships with children, who demonstrate that they feel safe and secure in their care. Staff provide a well-designed curriculum that ensures all educational programmes are delivered through adult-led activities or free play opportunities indoors or outside. Staff know their children very well and use a variety of teaching skills to build on what children already know, remember and can do.

Leaders and staff are ambitious in supporting children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). Staff work closely with parents and professionals to provide a consistent approach to understanding children's needs and how best to support them. All children make good progress in their learning and development. Children who speak English as an additional language are supported by staff. Staff learn and use children's home language to help them understand the meaning of English words. Bilingual staff members speak with children in their home language to reassure them and help them settle. Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour and conduct. They set clear rules and boundaries to help promote children's positive behaviour. Staff remind children of their expectations for saying please and thank you, being kind and sharing with their friends. This helps children to be courteous and behave well.

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

• Staff plan a curriculum to help children build sequentially on their previous learning. They use timely observations and ongoing assessment of children's learning to plan activities and exciting opportunities in response to children's next steps in their learning.
• Babies benefit from the good care and attention of the nurturing staff. This helps babies to settle quickly and feel safe and secure in the environment. Staff maintain clear communication with each other to ensure smooth transitions and refine their teaching strategies that are based on babies' developmental needs.
• Staff plan a range of different activities for children that support all areas of their learning. They take children's interests into account when planning activities so that children are keen to take part. Overall, children have positive attitudes to learning. However, at times, noise levels become high as children become overly excited, which impacts on other children's learning when they are engaged in quieter activities.
• Staff set up high-quality learning environments each day. Children are excited to take part in a wide range of activities available to them. However, staff do not always replenish the environment to maintain the high-quality experiences available. This results in children not having as many choices about their play and disengaging from highly effective play and learning.
• Children play outdoors each day where they control their bodies on ride-on toys and challenging obstacle courses. Children help staff to plant and grow vegetables in the garden, such as beans, carrots and peas. This helps them to understand the natural world and where food comes from.
• Children enjoy exploring a wide array of malleable and sensory resources. Staff working with babies skilfully encourage babies' thinking and extend their language, such as by asking 'what can you see?' and 'what does it feel like?' as they explore the sensory tray. Toddlers enjoy mark making with paints, using their fingers and vehicles. Pre-school children enjoy exploring the mud and making marks with sponges on sticks as they develop muscles for early writing skills.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents are extremely appreciative of the care and support that they and their children receive. Parents speak highly of the caring staff and the diverse range of learning experiences that their children receive. They say that their children are safe and well supported by the nursery.
• Staff support children to learn how to take care of themselves, live healthy lifestyles and be independent. The nursery provides nutritious meals and snacks. Children can access drinking water throughout the day. Staff help children to develop good independence skills. For example, they learn how to put on and remove their coats and wellington boots and scrape their plates when they have finished. These skills support children with their transition to school.
• The management team spends time completing staff supervision and offering staff training. Individual supervisions enable managers and staff to identify ways to continually develop their skills. Staff's well-being is of the utmost importance to leaders. Staff comment that they feel they can approach leaders at any time and that they will give them any support they need.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to minimise the noise levels in the rooms to fully enable all children to hear what is being said to them and concentrate on their learning
• ensure that the high-quality learning opportunities available for children are replenished and attractive to children throughout the day to consistently entice them to learn in the best possible ways.