Haverigg Nursery & The Clubbers

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy, active and safe in this nursery. Staff promote movement every day. They encourage children to dance, navigate obstacles and use balance bicycles. Children show great delight as they join in. Specific teaching helps them develop their large muscles and learn about the effects of exercise on the body. Children make strong bonds with staff. They seek them out to help with model making and ask to read books together. Staff tailor the settling-in sessions to meet each child's needs. When two-year-old children transition to the larger group, they can revisit the baby zone if they need time in the smaller space. This helps children feel secure. Babies also gain confidence as they visit their siblings and peers in the larger room with their key person.

Staff have high expectations of children, and children behave well. They follow known routines and listen carefully to instructions. Children are keen to learn. When some children are unsure of activities, staff sensitively come alongside to help them observe from a distance. Children also have access to the activities after group time. This gives children opportunity to take part one to one with a staff member and help those less confident to experience activities in their own time.

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

• Staff teach children about emotions. When they read stories together, they ask children how characters might feel. Staff listen to children's ideas and help them make links. For example, when children say a character is sad because she wants sweets, staff add that she is sad because she wants them but cannot have them. This helps children to make links between situations and feelings.
• Helping children to gain independence is a priority. Children learn to put on and take off their own outdoor clothing. They serve themselves food and pour drinks at snack time. This promotes children's self-esteem.
• Leaders add to children's life experiences. They thoughtfully provide adventures for children to explore the world around them. For example, they take the bus to visit shops or castles. They learn about the world as they practise using money. This helps children to develop important life skills.
• Safety is at the forefront of staff's minds. They observe children at play, redirecting them to larger spaces if they need to climb and run. Staff encourage children to think about safety when they build tall towers to climb. This helps children to manage their own risks without stopping imaginative play.
• Staff help children engage in a range of mark making. Young children paint with dyed yoghurt and drive toy cars through paint to make tracks. Older children complete a hunt for topic pictures, ticking them off as they go. This helps to prepare children for their next stage of learning.
• Parents appreciate receiving updates of their children's learning from the new online diary. However, staff do not always share what children will learn in each age group or how to add to this at home. This does not help parents to build on what their children already know.
• Leaders monitor children's progress. They look out for emerging gaps in knowledge or understanding. Leaders then use strategies to draw out children's learning. For example, they ask children individual questions at snack time. This helps children to keep making progress across the curriculum.
• The special educational needs coordinator promptly identifies children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). She works closely with outside agencies to assess whether children need extra support. She works with leaders to make provision for children who need calming spaces when they feel overwhelmed. This helps children with SEND to continue accessing the curriculum.
• Leaders support staff through appraisals and in the moment mentoring. They source relevant training courses for each age group of children and act on staff requests. This helps staff to feel valued and adapt their practice to match the children they work with. However, training about speech and language is in the early stages of development. Therefore, staff are not fully confident with modelling speech for clarity or to teach younger children how to join words together. This does not help children progress as quickly as they could.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen communication with parents to include ways that they can support their children's learning at home
• support staff to improve their knowledge of how to best help children develop their speaking skills.