Honeybuns Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy, settled and content at this nursery. Staff warmly welcome children on arrival and take time to chat to them and their families. Leaders prioritise children's individual needs and implement a carefully considered key-person approach. Staff are kind, caring and considerate. For example, they offer younger children hugs and reassurance and help and guide older children as they play or learn new skills.

Leaders and staff place a high priority on supporting children's emotional security. Staff successfully engage children in a variety of techniques to help them to recognise their feelings and begin to regulate their emotions. For example, small, soft teddies depicting the emotions 'happy', 'sad', 'worried', 'angry' and 'surprised' are available for children to choose when staff shrewdly notice this might be required. Furthermore, there is a quiet, calm sensory room available for children to make use of if they need to. Children develop excellent strategies to independently regulate their feelings and behaviour.

Children are highly motivated as they explore well-planned, focused activities. Staff make sure that children have plenty of time to persist and succeed when learning a new skill or solving a problem. For example, when making a magic wand in the forest garden area using a wide range of natural and creative materials, children keep trying to refine their scissor skills to cut lengths of ribbon or small twigs.

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

• Leaders support the staff team very well at this nursery, with the whole team working well together. It is obvious that all staff and leaders are passionate about what they do. Staff understand how to implement the personal development curriculum to build on children's skills over time. Staff support children very well in regard to their emotional development as they transition to the next stage in their education journey.
• Leaders ensure their ethos is securely embedded across the nursery. The curriculum has been thoughtfully considered and structured so that children learn the skills they need through play and focused activities. They successfully build on their skills through a carefully sequenced curriculum.
• Leaders support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities very well. Partnership working is excellent and means that children's individual needs are nurtured and supported. Timely and prompt assessments of children's progress mean that gaps in development are highlighted quickly. Intervention programmes and additional support, as well as focused use of additional funding, mean children make good progress from their starting points.
• Leaders and staff make sure that the environment is exciting and interesting. As a result, children are busy, occupied, motivated and enthusiastic to learn. Carefully planned activities offer excellent opportunities for children to become involved, play and explore across all areas of learning and development. For example, children find out about mathematical ideas as they try to balance Christmas baubles on top of cardboard tubes or investigate which ones will fit inside the tubes. Staff interactions during these learning opportunities help to extend children's understanding very well.
• Staff encourage children's independence extremely well as they support progress in self-help skills. This aspect is very strong and is threaded through the curriculum in every room. For example, to develop the physical skill over time of pouring drinks from jugs, babies reach out and grasp small jugs in sensory play. Toddlers practise this skill as they use large tweezers to pick up items on a table. Older children successfully pour themselves a drink during snack time.
• Staff provide children with some valuable opportunities for children to develop communication and language skills. Staff are careful to introduce new words during play. They promote children's listening skills through books and children eagerly join in with familiar nursery rhymes as they are sung throughout the day. Staff working with the younger children are not consistent in helping children to make the best possible progress in their communication and language.
• Partnerships with parents are supportive, with staff and leaders forging positive relationships. This helps communication about children's development and what is going on at nursery on a daily basis. An online platform keeps parents fully informed about their child's development and well-being. Parents say that they are very happy with the care and education provided at this nursery.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff working with the younger children to further enhance their communication and language development.