Fledgelings Day Nursery South Hornchurch

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and show a strong sense of belonging at this well-resourced nursery. Staff build good relationships with children and actively encourage their participation during learning activities. Staff settle children well as they move across rooms. They prepare children well for school. For instance, children develop a spirit of friendly cooperation as they willingly help staff with small tasks in their respective rooms.

Staff have high expectations of children's developing independence. They consistently encourage many aspects of children's self-care skills. This helps children and babies to learn to manage their own respiratory hygiene independently. Children learn to retrieve and put away their personal belongings without help. Leaders ensure that staff organise rooms and the outdoor environment in ways that excite children. Therefore, children are curious, energetic and keen to explore.

The leader's curriculum is generally planned well and securely understood by staff. Staff consider children's interests when creating the broad range of stimulating activities. Children remain engaged and benefit from various sensory, musical, construction, sand and water play activities. Therefore, children make good progress in their physical, social, early literacy and language development.

Across the nursery, staff are committed to helping children to communicate their emotions in age-appropriate ways. Therefore, children develop their ability to name different feelings and express how they feel.

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

• Staff promote children's skills needed for reading and writing. They sit and support children closely as they look at books. Children of all ages show interest in books and stories. Older children focus well as they practise early letter formation, when they are developmentally ready for this stage.
• Leaders ensure that staff routinely communicate their whereabouts via mobile radio devices. This ensures that appropriate staff-to-child ratios are maintained and children remain supervised indoors and outdoors.
• Staff promote children's emotional well-being effectively. They cuddle, sensitively reassure, praise and seek babies' permission before offering personal care. Therefore, babies have strong attachments to staff, and children are confident to approach adults.
• Staff promote children's physical development very well. For example, they make adaptations to the layout of rooms to encourage babies to move from crawling to toddling. Outdoors, staff provide further physical activities for children in the attractive garden. Children energetically pedal trikes, run, climb and jump. They develop their own imaginary play ideas and say, 'I'm making a pie for bugs', in the mud kitchen.
• Children behave very well. Staff communicate high expectations while modelling positive interactions. This encourages children's ability to share, take turns and show regard for their peers.
• Children learn the difference between words, such as 'squeeze' and 'pinch', as they immerse themselves in tea role play with fruit teabags and various utensils, for example. Staff play games, such as 'What's in the Box?' This helps children learn the names of unfamiliar objects and different animals. Staff refer to visual aids that help children follow transitions in the routine and understand instructions. This helps most children know when it is time to eat, rest and play. Despite this, at times, staff's transition arrangements for older children's lunchtimes are not flexible enough to consistently meet all children's needs.
• Support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is good. Leaders ensure additional funding is used appropriately. Staff working with individual children use effective interventions together with advice from external professionals to help children progress towards their targets.
• Staff provide opportunities that help children develop a positive sense of self, their individuality and similarities to their peers. They talk to children about their own and others' interests and encourage discussions about children's families. Despite this, the curriculum for understanding of the world is not fully effective. This is because staff provide too few opportunities for children to learn about other people's cultures and communities beyond their own.
• Parents are pleased with the progress their children make at the nursery. They commend the strong settling-in procedures in place for children. Parents say their children develop their independence and social skills at nursery. They describe the staff team as 'welcoming and supportive'.
• Staff report they feel valued by leaders. They feel they have a good work-life balance and commend the leadership team for the strong support for well-being issues.
• Leaders provide structured supervision sessions that identify individual staff's strengths and areas for improvement. They adopt robust recruitment and induction procedures and deploy staff to work in areas where their skills are best suited. Hence, staff are happy, motivated and committed to their roles.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• revisit the organisation of mealtime transition arrangements with staff working with older children so individual children's needs are consistently met
• strengthen the curriculum for understanding of the world so children have richer opportunities to learn about other people, cultures and communities beyond their own.