Flying Start Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The strong management team oversees and supports staff to help them develop their knowledge and skills. Children, therefore, benefit from quality learning experiences. Management places a strong emphasis on staff's well-being with a view that a happy staff team results in happy children. They also place a strong emphasis on supporting children to feel emotionally safe and secure and to develop confidence and independence. Children feel respected and valued. Staff sing songs in children's home languages, as well as including food packaging that depicts their home language in the home corner. This enables children to hear words and see items that are familiar to them.

The nursery curriculum is carefully sequenced so that all children are supported to develop a range of key skills over time. Staff carefully plan the learning environment for babies, creating opportunities for them to freely explore as they learn to move. They continually talk and sing to babies as they play. This provides them with lots of opportunities to hear language. Staff introduce toddlers to singing and story times, where they use props to help children to learn to wait for their turn and to focus their attention. Pre-school children remain focused for longer periods of time when listening to stories as staff engage them in informative discussions. Children excitedly share their knowledge as they identify that the author is someone who writes the 'letters in the book' and an illustrator draws the pictures. Children behave well and develop positive attitudes to learning due to the active encouragement and support of staff.

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

• Staff regularly review the number of children being cared for in each room and often split the children into two smaller groups. Each group them spends time playing inside and outside. By doing this, the numbers of children in each area reduces. This enables staff to provide children with more time and attention to meet their needs. This is especially effective for those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and for those who are less confident.
• Staff support children to respect clear boundaries and rules. They help them to learn about feelings and emotions and how to manage these. Stories are shared with younger children as a way to introduce them to a wide range of emotions. Pre-school children are supported to acknowledge their feelings and to discuss why they feel like this and the possible impact on others.
• Planned activities and focused discussions are used by staff to support children's understanding of oral health and online safety. Clear information is displayed around the nursery and shared with parents on both topics. This helps to raise parents' awareness of how they can help their children to stay healthy and safe.
• Core stories are introduced to children throughout the nursery. From these books, staff identify key words to introduce children to. This new strategy is starting to be implemented with more consistency as another way for staff to increase children's vocabulary.
• Management has clear plans in place to upskill the whole workforce and minimise varied practice. Several more experienced and qualified staff show exceptional skill and knowledge in how they engage and support children in their play and learning. For example, when toddlers spill their milk, the skilled staff naturally encourage them to mop it up, while explaining that the paper towels will 'absorb' the milk.
• Staff plan interesting, focused activities with small groups of children. They adapt activities to enable all children, including those with SEND, to participate at their level of understanding. This enables all children to make progress.
• Management considers children's all-round development, needs and background when deciding on how to spend additional funding. They provide children with new and varied opportunities, as well as additional resources and increased staffing. This has a positive impact on children's learning experiences and increases their skills.
• Routine experiences such as snack and mealtimes are not always well organised. This results in small periods of time where some staffs' positive interactions with children are reduced. For example, sometimes staff are continuing to prepare snack or serve meals, resulting in them being unable to offer quality support and assistance to all children consistently.
• Pre-school staff plan hands-on learning opportunities for children to compare different weights. They encourage children to consider if things are light or heavy as they place stones on the scales. When children begin to talk about pounds in the context of monetary value, staff explain to them the pounds being used in this context relate to weights and cannot be spent. This helps children to learn the correct knowledge.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• improve the organisation of routine experiences so that staff can consistently support children's learning through high-quality interactions.