Future Champions Day Nursery Chorley

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at the nursery happily and separate from their parents with ease. Staff welcome children with open arms and big smiles. They get to know children well and are swift to respond to their individual needs. Staff hold and cuddle new babies a lot to help them feel safe and form strong bonds. This promotes children's emotional well-being and helps them to feel happy at nursery. Staff teach children about the importance of sharing and taking turns. They model good manners, such as saying 'please' and 'thank you', explaining to children why these are important. Children are well behaved and follow staff instructions. They are quickly learning about what is expected of them at nursery.

The curriculum for communication and language development is promoted well. Staff engage children in conversations and singing to help them practise their speaking skills. They introduce new words, such as 'webbed' and 'propel' to describe what a ducks feet look like and how they are used. For children who speak English as an additional language, staff use words in their home language to help build their understanding. By the time children are in pre-school, they are confident and articulate communicators.

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

• Leaders are clear about what they want children to learn. They plan a broad curriculum that is sequenced across the rooms. However, occasionally, the delivery of the curriculum is variable. Staff working with older children are more consistent when implementing the curriculum than those working with younger children. Younger children are not consistently provided with purposeful learning experiences. Consequently, this hinders their engagement levels and, at times, leads them to wander without purpose.
• Staff monitor children's development closely to identify and address any gaps in learning. Leaders have links with outside agencies and make timely referrals for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Additional funding is used appropriately to support the children it is allocated to. This helps to narrow the gaps in learning and supports children to make good progress.
• Mathematical development is promoted well. Staff introduce the word 'medium' when comparing different-sized toy ducks. Toddler-aged children skilfully recognise some numerals and count dots with one-for-one correspondence during a matching activity. Children are developing some of the skills needed for the next stage in their learning.
• Staff provide lots of opportunities for children to explore books independently in the environment. They enhance children's understanding of stories such as 'The Gingerbread Man' by bringing them to life. Children use different tools to manipulate dough and make gingerbread men. Staff help children to role play parts of the story in the garden, such as 'run, run, as fast as you can'. This keeps children engaged and promotes their literacy skills.
• Children are developing good levels of independence. They serve their own meals, pour their own water and scrape their plates after eating. Pre-school children demonstrate lovely, independent play skills. They create games and scenarios in the role-play area and work together to build cars from blocks. They make choices about their play and are not reliant on staff for support. This helps children to be confident and self-assured when doing things for themselves.
• Children enjoy exploring the outdoor area. They show good physical strength when using the rope to climb up a tall ramp. Children are confident when navigating the balancing beam and show determination to get to the end. Babies skilfully scramble across tyres and use the slide independently. Children benefit from the fresh air and the daily opportunities to develop their physical skills.
• Staff are happy and feel well supported in their roles. There is a programme for professional development in place and staff receive ongoing supervision, coaching and mentoring. However, the programme is not yet fully embedded. For instance, some staff have not received the training they need to support their key children. Furthermore, not all staff implement the training that they have had. Consequently, there are inconsistencies in the quality of education across the nursery.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to implement the curriculum consistently to help younger children engage in more purposeful learning
• strengthen the programme of professional development to extend staff's skills and knowledge and provide more consistency in the quality of education.