Giggles Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and show confidence to explore a broad range of activities and experiences set up for them to enjoy. The manager and curriculum lead work closely with the staff team. This is to ensure that key persons set out precisely what they intend children to learn. Staff use knowledge from parents, their own observations and children's interests to provide rich learning environments. This helps to capture children's curiosity where they show a real keenness to participate and have good levels of concentration in their play.

Staff recognise the importance of developing all children's language skills in a variety of ways. For example, staff use signing and find out key words in home languages for children learning English as an additional language. Furthermore, children demonstrate high levels of engagement as they excitedly select props from a song bag. They all join in singing merrily to a range of songs and rhymes. These opportunities contribute towards building children's range of vocabulary.

Staff work closely to build strong attachments to babies and very young children. Staff offer warm and sensitive care that helps them feel settled and ready to engage in new experiences. For instance, babies show curiosity as they explore a sensory tray full of Christmas decorations. Staff encourage babies to touch and discover a range of items, linking words such as 'shiny bauble', 'sparkly fir cone' and 'glittery tinsel'.

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

• The manager and staff have worked tirelessly to meet all actions raised at the last inspection. Leaders demonstrate commitment and determination to ensure that the curriculum offer is purposeful. Children receive broad and balanced educational programmes that support them to make good progress in their learning and development. This includes ensuring that children who need extra help to catch up receive targeted support.
• On the whole, children behave well. Staff recognise the residual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to children's emotional resilience and behaviour. As such, staff offer substantial support for children who, at times, can easily get upset. Staff provide empathy and comfort to help children recover swiftly. However, staff do not teach older children simple ways how to recover from minor setbacks by themselves. Nevertheless, children show they are settled and happy at the nursery.
• Staff have a good working knowledge about different aspects of how to keep children safe. This includes information about children's dietary needs and health. They teach children when on local trips about road safety. However, staff do not teach children about safe screen time and e-safety. Despite this, staff demonstrate high levels of vigilance to support children's health and well-being.
• The manager and staff work closely with families to find out about their cultural heritage. For example, some children celebrate Saint Nicholas Day. Staff use this information to set up activities and experiences to acknowledge and celebrate family customs. This contributes towards valuing children's uniqueness and learning about life beyond the nursery. On occasion, parent partnership can be slightly variable across the age groups, where communication is not always consistent. Despite this, staff are working towards ensuring that they have the most updated information to support meeting the individual needs of children.
• Staff encourage children to practise independence skills. For instance, children put on their own coats and pour their own drink from the self-service water station. This helps to empower children to have the confidence to be able to master tasks by themselves.
• Staff frequently hold discussions and ask children questions to help them remember the rules on staying safe. Children confidently explain the rules when using the stairs to go back to their playroom from the garden. They reply: 'We do not push and shove and we hold onto the banister.' This demonstrates that children are learning about expected behaviours and how to keep themselves and their friends safe at nursery.
• Staff provide valuable experiences to support children learning about people and communities. For example, staff teach older pre-school children about writing and posting letters. A subsequent trip to the local post office to talk to a postman about sending letters took place. This experience supports children to learn that print carries meaning when writing letters. Furthermore, it gives children exposure to find out about the people that help us in the community.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build further on the support for children to learn how to overcome minor setbacks by themselves
• extend work on e-safety to support children to learn about how to stay safe online and safe screen time
• strengthen parent partnership arrangements so feedback to parents is consistent across all age groups.