Honeybuns Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

This is a warm and welcoming setting. The staff are enthusiastic, knowledgeable and happy. An effective key-person system means that they have warm, trusting bonds with the children they look after. Staff are quick to offer cuddles and reassurance to children who are distressed or upset. This supports children's emotional security and helps them to feel safe. Effective care practices ensure that children's personal care needs are met well. Staff follow children's individual routines as closely as possible. They support children to become increasingly independent in self-care, such as handwashing and feeding. This motivates children to do things for themselves and boosts their self-confidence.

Staff have developed a suitably ambitious curriculum that enables all children to make progress in their learning and development. They provide a balance of adult-led and child-initiated learning based on children's interests. Furthermore, staff offer a range of experiences that help to support children's wider personal development. Visitors, such as a vet and the police, are welcomed into the setting to talk to the children about the work they do. Staff also take children on visits to the local area and expose them to the celebrations and traditions of other cultures. This range of experiences help to deepen children's understanding of others and the wider community.

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

• Staff model language well. They introduce new words, such as 'experiment' and 'erupt' that broaden children's vocabulary. There are effective systems in place, such as pictures and simple signing, to support early language acquisition and language development for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff ask questions that encourage children to think critically. They provide sufficient time for children to think before expecting a response. As a result, children become confident and effective communicators.
• Staff provide lots of opportunities for children to explore early mathematical ideas through play. They extend children's learning as they play alongside them. For example, they count the number of bricks as they build towers with one- and two-year-old children. Older children are encouraged to use the language of size as they compare objects. This supports children's emerging understanding of early mathematical ideas.
• Staff support children's physical development well. They provide regular opportunities for outdoor play. Children of all ages delight as they explore the obstacle course in the garden. Staff encourage discussions about healthy eating at mealtimes, and they give consistent messages around health and hygiene. For instance, they explain to children why they need to wear hats and sunscreen and limit the time they play out in the sun. This helps children to understand some of the things that are important to stay fit and healthy.
• Children engage in play activities and generally behave well. However, staff do not always insist on high levels of behaviour. For example, staff remind older children to 'use their inside voices', but they do not ensure this happens. This makes it difficult for children engaging in other activities and limits the impact on their learning. The expectations for children's behaviour are the same throughout the setting. This means that they may not be realistic for some children's stages of development and, as a result, does not fully support children to understand the expectations for their behaviour.
• Staff plan exciting group activities based on children's individual interests, recent assessment and next steps for learning. However, the intentions for learning are not always clear or explained well enough to children, and staff miss opportunities to extend learning further. This means that children do not always know what it is they are learning and do not make as much progress as they could.
• There are effective measures in place for the supervision of staff. All staff are suitably qualified and benefit from regular supervision sessions and appraisals, as well as training to improve their practice. Effective actions have been taken to reduce staff workload and support their well-being.
• Staff work closely with parents to ensure the best possible outcomes for children. They provide parents with detailed information about their children's progress and ways they can continue to support this learning at home. Parents value the support the staff give them and the high levels of care and education their children receive.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the management of group activities to ensure that all children's learning continues to be extended fully
• consider ways to ensure the expectations for children's behaviour are appropriate to their age and stage of development, and support staff to give consistently clear messages so that children know and understand the expectations for their behaviour.