First Choice Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and feel safe at this home-from-home, warm and welcoming nursery. New children become familiar with the routines of the nursery and settle quickly on arrival. They run in happily and are eager to start their day. They form strong bonds with staff and their peers.

Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour. Children behave generally well and engage in a range of activities linked to their individual interests. For example, indoors, babies enjoy building towers using coloured blocks and gain good hand-to-eye coordination skills. They explore using their senses, such as when they investigate the feeling of sand as it runs between their fingers. Older babies have fun as they run and explore in the outdoor area. They climb on the equipment and develop good physical skills.

Older children are very confident and interact exceptionally well with visitors. They are eager to share their views and talk animatedly about what they enjoy doing. Older children also like to play and explore outdoors. They work together well as they pretend to repair the nursery equipment, exclaiming, 'I can fix it!' Children develop good mathematical skills. For example, they skilfully line up numerals in the right order up to 10. Staff encourage children to count on from 10 to help them to extend their counting skills even further.

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

• Leaders and staff are clear about the aims, values and ethos of the nursery. They work very well together to celebrate and nurture every child. The enthusiastic manager and her experienced staff team create and implement a well-designed and balanced curriculum for children. They get to know each child well and follow their individual interests, planning activities based around these. As a result, all children make good progress.
• Staff promote children's language and communication skills well. For example, children take part in plenty of singing and story time sessions. Staff talk to children during daily care routines, such as at nappy changing times. This helps to build on children's speech development.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are supported very well. The newly appointed SEND coordinator is quick to refer children when they need additional support. Staff work closely with a range of professionals, such as speech and language therapists. They devise targeted plans of support for each child. This ensures that all children who need extra help in their learning receive the support they need. Children catch up quickly, particularly with their communication and language skills.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Staff share information about what children need to learn next with parents. They invite them to attend stay-and-play sessions, and provide strategies for parents to use with their child at home. For example, staff teach parents how to use simple sign language to aid their child's communication skills.
• Children have plenty of opportunities to run about in the outdoor area no matter what the weather is like. Additional funding is used well to benefit disadvantaged children who need a little bit of extra support with their physical development. For instance, funded children enjoy taking part in an extra-curricular sports activity provided by a specialised physical education instructor. They exclaim, 'I have big muscles' and learn how exercise affects their growing bodies. Children gain a good understanding about the importance of leading healthy lifestyles.
• Children quickly build close attachments to staff. Some staff skilfully encourage children to use their words to express their feelings and find solutions. However, not all staff are consistent with their approach to supporting children with their emotions. As a result, some children become frustrated as they struggle to find resolutions to challenges they encounter.
• Overall, the manager provides a good programme of support, training and mentoring for the staff team. Staff have one-to-one meetings to discuss the needs of their key children. They attend regular staff meetings and complete quizzes to help to keep their knowledge of safeguarding issues up to date. However, the monitoring of staff does not focus precisely enough to ensure that the good quality of teaching is raised to the utmost levels.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to provide a more consistent approach when helping children to develop the skills they need to regulate their emotions
• develop a more focused programme of professional development to help to raise the good quality of teaching to the highest levels.