Kiddies Korner Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and settled in this warm and welcoming provision. All children, including those who are new, are well supported by staff who are kind, welcoming and caring. Staff know the children well, and they offer good assurances to help children to feel secure. Effective key-person arrangements are in place to ensure that all children are well supported, and their individual needs are met. This helps children to have a strong sense of belonging.

Staff plan and provide a curriculum that is fun and interesting. Overall, staff support children's learning well. For example, they promote children's communication and language development effectively through singing songs, discussions and small-group activities. This helps to build children's vocabulary and promotes their listening and attention skills. All children, including those in receipt of additional funding and those in need of specific support, make good progress.

Staff are good role models. They positively remind children of the provision's boundaries, such as using 'kind hands' and 'walking feet'. Children have built some good friendships and are seen to play games, such as hide and seek, together. Children share, play alongside others and cooperate well overall.

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

• The management team and staff work together effectively to provide an inclusive learning environment for the children. Staff are well deployed in the provision. They ensure that their time is spent well supporting children in activities that interest them and boost their curiosity.
• Staff have a clear understanding of what they want children to learn. They provide a curriculum that is well sequenced to help children build on their learning over time. Staff are confident in the areas of learning. They skilfully adapt their teaching to ensure that children's next steps in learning are fully supported.
• Children benefit from regular opportunities to be physically active. Staff provide a wealth of outdoor experiences to enhance children's large-physical skills. For example, children enjoy regular forest school sessions, which help to support risk-taking, play and exploration. Children have good fun in the garden daily, where they practise their coordination and balancing skills as they explore on ride-on toys and use balancing beams.
• Staff support children's exploration skills well, and they provide children with a wealth of media and materials to support their creativity and imagination. For instance, children enjoy creating and playing with dough, sand, water and arts and crafts. This gives them opportunities to build the muscles in their hands ready for writing as they use tools, such as scissors, stickers and cutters.
• Staff communicate well with the children. They talk and interact with them about what they are doing and ask them questions to support the children's listening skills. However, at times, staff do not fully consider children's ages and stages of development when communicating with them. This means that, occasionally, staff do not give children time to think and solve problems themselves to enable them to respond with their ideas.
• Staff are respectful of children. For example, they ask for permission to change children's nappies before doing so. Staff support children's behaviour well with consistent positive praise and encouragement. However, on occasion, some staff do not provide sufficient guidance or explanations to children to help them develop a deeper understanding of the rules and learn about consequences and expectations.
• Partnerships with parents are good. Staff provide regular updates to parents about their children. Parents comment positively about the progress their children make at the provision. In addition, they praise the staff and comment that they are friendly and are supporting their children to learn. Staff build effective working relationships with external agencies to ensure that children receive early help and support as required.
• The management team ensures that staff recruitment is robust and that staff are suitable to work with children. Staff comment that they feel well supported through appraisals, team meetings, training and various informal communications.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support children further to consider their own thoughts and ideas to help them express these and solve problems for themselves
• build on the good behaviour management strategies to help support children's understanding of the rules and boundaries even further.