Hart Plain Daycare

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children take the lead in their play and learning at this setting. Staff provide a well-balanced, broad and rich curriculum that excites and entices children to explore and learn about the world around them. Consequently, children have very good attitudes towards their learning. Children love stories, rhymes and books and enjoy spending time looking at books, inside and outside. Children make good use of different texts to support their understanding of their play and learning. For example, children use reference books in the home corner and science books in the discovery area. They listen carefully and join in at story time, accurately predicting what happens next, which demonstrates their familiarity with the text and consolidates their prior learning. For example, when the teacher is retelling the story of the 'Three Little Pigs' and pauses the story, the children continue, 'I'll huff, and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!'

Children are welcomed into a home-from-home environment. They interact with resources and materials that are reflective of the world and life in modern Britain. For example, the role-play area is decorated and furnished with china plates and glass vases with fresh flowers in. Children see framed pictures on the walls that depict images of national emblems, such as Chinese dragons, and table tops are covered in traditional African cloth. This helps to support the children, promoting respect, tolerance and diversity, and it develops children's sense of self-worth, identity and well-being.

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

• Staff are clear on what they want children to know and learn. Activities and experiences are purposefully planned to meet children's individual needs. Children make good progress.
• Staff provide a language-rich environment for children and support children's love of stories, rhyme and songs. Children hear clear, fluent vocabulary, which builds their language development.
• Children are provided with lots of opportunities to develop and practise their independence and self-help skills. For example, children have access to a snack and a hydration station, as well as a hygiene station, throughout the day. This allows them to begin to recognise their own needs and meet these independently.
• Children enjoy taking care of the plants and herbs at the setting, and they are supported by staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of the natural world.
• Children are clear on the rules of the setting and know how to keep themselves and each other safe. For instance, a child playing outside with the role-play construction equipment carefully puts on their hat, mask and gloves before starting to lay toy bricks. When another child comes and joins in, he says, 'wait, you need to wear your hat first'. This demonstrates prior knowledge and understanding of the risks associated with this task.
• Children listen carefully to instructions and remain engaged in their learning and play. However, there are inconsistencies in how children are supported by staff to understand their feelings and manage their emotions. This leads to times when children struggle to share or be kind to each other, especially in the pre-school room.
• Staff benefit from regular supervision, and there are effective systems in place for providing staff with feedback on the quality of teaching and learning. This supports the continuous improvement of standards of education and care within the setting. However, newer staff at the setting are not always supported to fully understand the setting's policies in a timely manner, and this can lead to inconsistencies in practice, such as behaviour management.
• Staff feel happy and well supported in their roles. Leaders and managers have good oversight of staff's workloads, skills and suitability, which promotes their professional development and well-being.
• Staff work well with other professionals, such as those in health, education and social care, to provide timely intervention and family support to children with additional needs. This promotes multi-agency working and provides children and families with consistency in care and experiences.
• Parents feel that their children make good progress in their time at the setting. They speak highly of the staff team's support and professionalism and appreciate the shared strategies and home-school targets that they make in partnership with their children's key person. For example, parents share examples of how they have been supported to develop their children's speech and language at home while waiting for appointments with specialist services.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on the behaviour management strategies in place to develop children's understanding of feelings and emotions and to support their learning about how their behaviour affects themselves and others
• support staff's knowledge and understanding of the setting's behaviour policy, and provide a more consistent approach to supporting children's positive behaviour.