Kiddi Caru Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have good relationships with their key person and other staff, who remember their names even if they are not based in the same room. Children quickly form strong bonds with their special person and seek them out to share their ideas, thoughts and achievements. This helps to support children's personal, social and emotional development. Babies settle into their room easily. They are supported at all times by attentive key staff, which helps them to form a strong relationship from which to explore their new surroundings. They gradually move further away from their special person, safe in the knowledge they are not far away.

Older children share their ideas with staff, who help them to create drawings and models based on their thoughts. For example, when children ask for help to draw a tow truck, staff are on hand to help bring their ideas to life, creating models from construction bricks. Mealtimes are well organised. Children enjoy these social times, where they are able to interact, listen to staff and their friends, and develop their social skills. Staff are on hand to help children cut their food and practise pouring water into their cups. Children behave well. They understand staff's expectations for their behaviour and act accordingly. For example, children know how to stay safe in the forest school area.

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

• Children benefit from an ambitious curriculum. Overall, staff make good use of questions and discussions to help children extend their ideas and support their learning. However, not all staff are as confident and skilled to ensure that the quality of teaching is consistently high across the nursery.
• Staff encourage babies to explore resources, such as clear tubes with sparkles and different colours inside. They talk to babies about what happens when they shake the tubes. Toddlers enjoy playing outside in the garden, pushing small prams and using ride-on toys. Indoors, they sit down on mats inside to listen to songs and rhymes, following staff's lead to copy their actions and hand movements. However, sometimes, activities last too long, which means the youngest children do not always remain engaged.
• Older children confidently create obstacles using tyres and wooden planks in the forest school, which they then bounce on. Staff encourage children to risk assess what they are doing to help keep themselves safe. For example, children know that if they wedge the plank into the tyre, it is then secure for them to stand on.
• The management have worked hard to improve staff's practice. Actions set at the last inspection have been met and staff work very well together, within their own rooms and the nursery, as a team. Staff have lots of opportunities to complete training to update their knowledge.
• Children make good progress in relation to their starting points. Staff know their key children's interests and current stage of development. They use this information to plan for what children need to learn next. Regular assessment helps staff to monitor children's achievements and close any gaps that emerge in their learning.
• Parent partnerships are good. Staff regularly inform parents about their children's learning and progress. They encourage parents to share what their children are doing at home and any milestones that are reached, such as babies taking their first steps.
• Staff work effectively with other professionals to help support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Regular meetings between staff, parents and specialists help to inform learning plans, which provide continuity in supporting children's development and care.
• Staff have good links with school teachers from the various schools which children will attend when the time comes. Information is exchanged between settings to enable teachers to understand children's stages of development. This helps to provide continuity in children's learning as they move on to the next stage in their education.
• Children of all ages have lots of opportunities to develop their communication and language skills. Older children repeat favourite sentences from well-known books as they listen intently when staff read to them. Babies use their voices to communicate with staff, who acknowledge and respond to their early babbles and sounds.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop the consistency of staff's teaching skills to extend children's learning to the highest level
• support staff to plan and adapt group activities to encourage all children, including the youngest, to take part and remain engaged.