Islington Square Day Nursery and Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff have established strong bonds with the children, who are confident to express their wants and needs. Staff encourage children to be kind to one another and to demonstrate respectful behaviour. Staff have attended training and offer children practical and consistent support in managing their behaviour. Staff talk with children about feelings and help them to understand how their actions affect others and have implemented strategies, such as the use of sand timers, to support children to learn to share and take turns. This helps children to manage their feelings. Children's behaviour is good.

Staff have high expectations of what children can do. They are good role models and demonstrate positive attitudes. Children mirror this and confidently play and explore. For example, toddlers enthusiastically copy the yoga poses and stretch and learn to control their movements in a yoga session. Activities and daily discussions support children well in learning about healthy practices. For example, staff plan regular cooking activities for children to cook healthy recipes, such as autumn pumpkin energy balls, promoting positive relationships with healthy food.

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

• Leaders have a clear overview of the curriculum and monitor its effectiveness. They support the staff to identify where children may be falling behind in their learning and take action to help them keep up. Staff work well with outside agencies. Additional funding is used effectively to provide the targeted resources and experiences some children require to thrive and develop. All children make good progress.
• Overall, staff support all children to develop their language and communication skills. They use sign language for babies, props and plan small-group activities well to aid toddlers and older children in learning new vocabulary and to start to form sentences. Children have many opportunities to practise their language skills. For instance, when older children mix flour, water and oil with their hands to make play dough, they say they are 'making pizza' and describe the toppings they would like to add.
• Staff usually build on children's play and encourage them to answer questions. However, on occasion, staff ask too many questions and do not offer older children enough time to think and respond during some activities. This does not help them think critically and learn how to solve problems in their learning.
• Stimulating activities and purposeful daily discussions support children well in learning about healthy practices. For example, children talk with staff about the benefits of eating well as they pretend to cook dinner for staff in the role-play area. Staff supervise children well and ensure that all areas are safe.
• Children gain a love of books from a young age. Babies help to lift the flaps in books to see which animal is behind. They turn the pages in books and learn how to handle books gently. Younger children enjoy books with textures, bold words and pictures. Older children enjoy listening to a wide range of fiction stories and can recall events from their favourite books, such as 'The Gruffalo'. After reading the book, staff extend learning, as pre-school children build their habitats for the 'Gruffalo', made from metal squares, small wooden logs and stones. To further develop literacy skills, children choose books from the lending library to share with their parents at home.
• Overall, staff support older children's mathematics with lots of opportunities to talk about shapes and volume. However, at times, staff do not maximise opportunities to support younger children to learn about quantity, counting and number language during everyday play.
• Staff show children that they are kind, polite and respectful. Children reflect this in their daily play and enjoy participating in activities that aid them in understanding and respecting differences and similarities.
• The manager undertakes regular supervisions and appraisals of staff, which aid them in reviewing their work and making further improvements and promoting new ideas. For instance, staff successfully plan regular opportunities for children to participate in science, technology, engineering and mathematics activities, cooking and developing their investigation skills, to foster children's curiosity and help them become active learners.
• Parents and carers are delighted with the setting and express how much their children enjoy attending. They speak highly of the staff and particularly value how much they have helped with the good progress children are making.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to give older children time to think and resolve the problems that they encounter during play, so they consistently develop their thinking and problem-solving skills
• strengthen opportunities for younger children to extend their understanding of wider mathematical language.