Headstart Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happy and demonstrate their strong relationships with staff. Staff's caring and nurturing manner supports children to settle quickly and helps to ensure they feel safe and secure. Staff offer children praise and encouragement throughout the day which helps them to share their ideas and thoughts with friends. Children become highly focussed on a wide range of tasks and opportunities including potion making. Children giggle as they suggest they have made 'worm juice' that is expensive, even if it does not taste nice. Children learn new mathematical language and concepts from staff, such as 'half full', and develop their use of trial and error to understand why their potion might overflow. Children listen carefully and follow staff's instructions and guidance. For example, when asked, they put their aprons away when they have finished with them and wash their hands before sitting patiently for their lunch. Children use manners when responding to one another, using the words please and thank you, which is prompted and reiterated by staff.

Children enjoy being physically active. Staff help children make their own decisions and develop a positive attitude towards managing risks in their play. Indoors, children in the baby room access equipment to challenge their balance, spacial awareness, and coordination, while staff stay close by to help them when necessary, to promote their safety. Staff help children to develop a love of books and stories and take any opportunity to sing with children during the day. Children actively seek books out in the environment to look at independently and are excited for staff to read to them. They demonstrate the variety of familiar words and actions they learn from staff.

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

• Staff know the children well and are attuned to their individual care and learning requirements. They assess what children know and can do, and identify any potential gaps in children's development. This includes children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff share this information with one another, and parents and carers, to offer a consistent approach to supporting children's learning.
• Parents comment how effectively staff communicate with them, including gathering information about their child's home experiences. They explain staff use a range of pictures, notices, and thorough conversations when they collect children to make sure all parents feel included in their child's learning and development journey.
• Staff plan activities that engage children using their current interests, as well as providing opportunities to discover new interests, such as planting and growing. Staff explain to children how to plant a variety of seeds, using their developing fine motor skills to scoop and pour soil carefully into pots. They share new information with the children, building upon prior learning, about what seeds need to grow and why. Children show pride in telling others about the planting process.
• Staff play alongside children and model skills they want them to learn. For example, they show children how to stand and stack blocks, demonstrating how to count them. Staff praise children for being able to imitate this. However, some staff do not recognise when their input is needed while children play to be able to extend some children's learning further. Therefore, as children do not know what they can do next, they loose interest in the play and move on before making the most progress they could.
• Staff use a good balance of questions, comments and familiar key words to support children develop their speech and language skills. While helping younger children to complete puzzles, staff teach them new language such as tall, long and neck, as they describe the animals on the puzzles. Staff encourage the children to copy these words and respond to the youngest babies' babble, encouraging them to imitate different sounds and mouth movements.
• Most staff help children to learn through familiar daily routines. For example, staff explain why children need to wash their hands before eating and how to put an apron on before playing with water. However, some staff do not make their expectations clear enough for some children to understand and retain without adult support. For example, although staff tell children to 'share', they do not always help children understand what this means. Therefore, some children continue to find this difficult.
• Leaders are passionate about providing the best experiences for children. They are reflective and frequently evaluate staff practice. Leaders provide good-quality supervisions, collectively discussing what training staff may need, and encourage staff of all levels to develop their skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to recognise when their input is needed during children's play to further extend children's learning
• strengthen the consistency of high-quality interactions staff provide children when supporting their behaviour.