Honey Pots Childcare Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at the nursery with joyful smiles and wave goodbye to their parents happily. Children feel safe and confident. They demonstrate their growing independence as they thoughtfully look for the letter of their name and proudly hang their bags and coats on their peg. Friendly staff welcome children and engage them in meaningful conversations that foster their developing language skills. They talk together about the different people that are in the nursery today and the interesting activities that children have been doing at home during the Easter holidays.

Leaders create an ambitious and well-organised curriculum that builds on children's interests. Children quickly become absorbed with the engaging resources that have been set up for them. Staff are on hand to support each learning experience. For example, children try hard as they fit puzzle pieces together and carefully match the different parts of the picture together. Staff offer them plenty of praise when they complete it with success and recognise the different numbers with ease. Children are proud of their accomplishments and have highly positive attitudes to learning.

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

• Staff use ongoing assessment to ensure that all children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, continue to make good progress. They communicate closely with professionals and other settings that children attend to ensure that best outcomes are fully promoted.
• Children's communication skills are supported well by enthusiastic staff. They recognise the importance of providing children with vocabulary as they play. For example, when children explore the climbing frame, staff add words such as 'up', 'over' and 'under' to enhance children's knowledge of the language involved in what they are doing.
• Overall, children behave well and understand the routines of the nursery. However, at times, staff are not consistent in their approach to managing certain behavioural expectations. For example, when children run inside, some staff ask children not to, whereas others do not. Through this, children do not receive regular messages about rules and therefore do not always follow them.
• Children are active and enjoy exploring their physical abilities. They persevere as they throw hoops onto cones with accuracy and skilfully throw beanbags into numbered buckets. Children run with confidence and pedal effortlessly around the play area.
• The learning opportunities staff provide are interesting, and children thoroughly enjoy them. For example, they explore pictures of different faces on a lightboard together. However, occasionally, staff are not fully effective at making links with other concepts children are learning about, such as feelings and emotions, to extend their understanding further.
• Children are supported in building good early writing skills. For example, staff regularly encourage children to recognise and use the first letter of their name, such as when they trace it in shaving foam and when they label their artwork. This helps to develop literacy skills for children to apply in their next stages of learning.
• Leaders are knowledgeable and reflect on their provision. They consider how elements of their practice are working and discuss potential changes with staff, for example how they record observations. Staff explain that they feel involved in decisions that are made and feel that their well-being is highly supported.
• Parents explain how happy they are with the information and support they receive from staff. They tell the inspector how staff provide activities to take home to support them with children's speech and language development. Partnerships with parents are strong.
• Staff support children as they sensitively carry out personal care routines. They kindly ask them if they can change their nappy and explain the importance of why this routine needs to be carried out. Children are supported by staff as they discuss potty training and are frequently reminded to wash their hands. Children are developing a good understanding of personal hygiene and health.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to help them understand how to consistently and effectively explain rules and boundaries so that they can be fully understood by children
• strengthen the delivery of learning and encourage children to make links between different concepts to deepen their understanding.