Hunnitots Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Since the last inspection, leaders have worked to strengthen the curriculum and how well staff deliver it. They have made significant improvements to the way that staff support children's personal, social and emotional development. This has had a positive impact on children, particularly in the pre-school room, but also to how settled babies and toddlers feel. Overall, children engage well in learning. They learn how to treat others. Staff achieve this by acknowledging how secure children feel. They use sensitive discussion to encourage older children's positive choices.

Children learn how to negotiate, share and turn take. During play on a balance beam, staff teach children how to risk assess by encouraging them to check their surrounding area. Consequently, children wait for their friend to move out of the way before they jump off a bench. These experiences help to lay the foundations for children's positive social interactions and relationships in the future.

Children are happy and content at the nursery. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, show that they feel safe and secure through their positive behaviours. Babies bond with the staff caring for them as they receive gentle comfort. Staff cuddle babies when they have just woken up to allow them to feel fully awake before they go off to explore and play again.

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

• The acting manager and her team are highly reflective. Managers involve and motivate staff in making improvements. The team has lots of plans for further improvements,. For example, they are creating a sensory room for children. This means that the quality of provision is continuously improving.
• Staff working in the nursery report that they receive strong support for their professional development and well-being from their managers. They complete training and have regular supervision meetings. This has led to improvements to staff's practice since the last inspection.
• Leaders and staff understand how to safeguard children. Staff are aware of the procedures to follow if they have a concern about a child. Leaders have reflected on how they have previously dealt with concerns about staff. They have identified how they will improve practice moving forwards to meet their statutory requirement to work effectively with other agencies.
• Children gain good communication skills. Conversation between staff and children flows freely. Staff support the development of babies' communication and language skills as they sign words such as 'more' and 'banana' to them. This helps babies understand concepts and communicate with others before they can speak. Older children hear and use a broad vocabulary as staff purposefully introduce language related to the topics planned, such as the language of mathematics, during well-planned learning opportunities.
• Children have opportunities to develop their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and self-care skills as they practise how to serve their own snack using spoons. However, children are less able to independently manage their own drinking of water when they feel thirsty. This is because at times other than regular meal and snack times when staff provide drinks, children need to enlist staff support to access drinking water.
• Staff get to know children and their families well. Staff use what they know about children to carefully identify what children need to learn next. They give parents information about what children do at nursery and share some wider information about learning and services in general. However, sometimes parents are not completely sure what it is that staff are helping children to learn. This affects parents' understanding of what they can help their individual child with at home.
• The curriculum overall is challenging and delivered well by staff. Occasionally however, such as at group times, some aspects of teaching are not well matched to children's individual stage of development. For example, group times can sometimes be too long for children to sustain their interest. There are occasional times when staff are not on hand to support children with aspects of their learning that they need adult guidance with to help them to develop their skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• promote the development of children's self-care skills further by finding ways to enable them to independently access their own drinks
• develop further staffs' understanding about how to deliver the challenging curriculum, to achieve consistency with teaching that is well matched to children's individual stage of development, and in their support of children's learning during play and daily activities
• revise plans and methods for sharing information with parents so that they are fully informed about how they can support their child's individual learning at home.