Footprints Day Nursery Wallsend

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thoroughly enjoy the time they spend at this nursery. They arrive happily. Since the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, children leave their parents at the main door. Staff welcome them with enthusiasm. Their warm, friendly approach helps children to feel secure and ready to learn. Overall, the curriculum is challenging and supports children's learning well. Pre-school children become excited as they set up their 'fairy garden' outdoors. They demonstrate strong language skills and talk with each other as they play. Children in the 'Butterflies' room sing and perform actions to nursery rhymes and songs. They clap their hands and pretend to put their 'Peter Rabbit' ears on. This helps to support children's awareness of rhythm and rhyme. Very young children who are new to the nursery show that they feel safe as they settle into their new daily routines. They begin to smile as they sit with staff and explore interesting objects, such as crunchy autumn leaves.

Children's behaviour throughout the nursery is good. Children respond very well to routines, such as tidying up. They confidently know where resources go and place them in their correct place. Pre-school children develop resilience and cooperate with others when things do not always go as planned. For instance, when the spray bottles children use for painting stop working, they try to fix them. When this is unsuccessful, children share the remaining bottle that is functioning well and spray paint together on the screen.

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

• Staff provide excellent support for children's communication skills. They are highly skilled in recognising when children's speech development has been impacted, for example during the COVID-19 restriction periods. Staff superbly incorporate songs and rhymes as children play, which helps children to join in and use single words and phrases.
• Overall, support for children's early literacy skills is good. Staff sit alongside children and look at books together. Children concentrate well. They point to the pictures and help to turn the pages, which extends their early reading skills well. However, staff have not fully explored how they can best support children to develop their early writing skills as they progress through the nursery, to raise their achievements even higher.
• Pre-school children enjoy a broad range of activities, indoors and outdoors, throughout the day. Although staff have an understanding of what they want children to learn, some activities that they plan are not always suitable for children's stage of development and level of understanding. For example, some activities staff plan to support children's understanding of how to look after their teeth are beyond their comprehension.
• Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities very well. They act on their initial observations and share this information with external agencies, including health visitors. This ensures that children get the support they need to meet their developmental needs.
• The manager and her staff team place a strong focus on children developing the skills they need to succeed in life. Staff work closely with parents and ensure that daily opportunities, including access to the garden and messy play, are provided. This supports children's physical health and prepares them well for the future.
• Partnerships with parents are superb. Parents speak highly of the nursery and many say that they could not wait for their children to start after their initial visits. Written comments produced for inspection include, 'I can't thank Footprints and the staff enough for their support and for how caring and empathetic they all are.'
• Staff are involved in the self-evaluation of the nursery. They carry out audits of their childcare rooms to review their practice and identify ways they can improve further. For instance, staff in the 'Butterflies' room have enhanced their reading area when they identified that children were not using it as much as they would like. The area is now welcoming and inviting and children choose to sit there independently to look at books.
• Staff are supported well by the manager. She provides staff with ongoing opportunities, including observations of their practice, to help to improve their good skills even further. New staff benefit from effective induction arrangements, which helps them to develop a strong understanding of their role.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to implement a progressive curriculum for early writing, and support children's developing skills throughout the nursery
• ensure that activities are consistently planned at the right level for pre-school children's age and stage of development.