Forget Me Not Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children develop strong communication skills in the language-rich environment. Toddlers enjoy singing along to familiar songs while babies delight in shaking tambourines and moving their bodies in time to the music. Older children listen intently to stories. Staff read in a highly engaging manner, using different voices for each character and varying the tone, volume and speed of their voices.

Children develop a love of reading. They are all eager to choose books from the nursery's lending library to take home and share with their parents. Children have many opportunities to develop their good literacy skills. Babies handle soft books independently. Older children use the pictures in books as prompts to retell familiar stories.

Children are happy and feel secure. Babies that are new to the setting quickly form strong emotional attachments to staff. Staff attune to their needs very well. When babies wake up, staff gently talk to them and stroke their hair until they are ready to start playing. Children behave well. Staff are skilled at supporting children to resolve minor disagreements.

Staff provide good educational experiences that interest children and motivate them to learn. They promptly identify when children have additional needs and they work effectively with other professionals to provide specialist support for children's development. All children make good progress, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

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

• Staff provide a wide variety of educational experiences based on children's interests. They use their strong teaching skills to extend children's learning as they play. Managers have recently enhanced systems for assessing children's progress and use the information to inform what children need to learn next. However, the system is new and not embedded and not all staff plan the next steps in children's learning as precisely as possible.
• Children benefit from plenty of opportunities to be active and develop their physical skills. Staff provide interesting resources for babies to encourage them to move and to spend time on their tummies, lifting their heads and building strength in their arms. Children take part in planned movement sessions. They notice that they feel hot and tired after exercising.
• Staff interact well with children. They allow children plenty of time to think, express their ideas and find solutions. Children take turns rolling balls through a long cardboard tube elevated at one end by tyres. They work well together to dislodge a ball that is stuck. Children test out their ideas, using wooden tools, shaking and lifting to remove it. Staff talk to children as they work together, providing a narrative of what they are doing and offering encouragement and praise. Children clap and smile when they achieve their aims.
• Staff support children's personal, social and emotional development very well. Children are friendly towards each other and they develop high levels of confidence. Staff appreciate that children may not have finished an activity by the time they need to move on. Children know to leave a red triangle on resources, so that they are not packed away and they can return later to finish activities to their satisfaction.
• Parents report that their children are happy at the setting. They comment on improvements in their children's speech and they are pleased that children sing songs and rhymes at home that they have learned at nursery. Parents value daily discussions with staff about children's well-being and the activities they have taken part in. However, parents are not consistently provided with information to support children's learning at home as well as possible.
• Children develop good levels of independence. Older children understand the nursery routines well. They serve their own lunches and prepare fruit and vegetables for snack time. Babies have plenty of time to practise using spoons to feed themselves.
• The management team provide strong support for staff's professional development. Regular supervision sessions are used effectively to celebrate achievements, provide coaching for staff and to identify training needs. Managers and staff are ambitious and motivated to study for further qualifications to support them in developing their practice to the highest levels. Staff undertake specific training to support them in their roles. For instance, upon promotion to room leader, staff undertake management training.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• embed the new assessment system to inform staff's planning and support children to achieve the highest levels of progress
• enhance the exchange of information with parents to fully involve them in their children's learning and development.