Kids Planet Barkston Ash

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The friendly staff at this welcoming nursery develop strong relationships with children and families. Children and babies demonstrate they feel happy and safe. They separate from their parents and carers with ease and settle quickly. All are eager to join in with the activities and experiences on offer. For instance, younger children enjoy playing with dough and being introduced to simple shapes in a cornflour mixture. Older children have enormous fun creating a 'bungalow' out of a giant cardboard box, because 'it can't have any stairs'. Staff, in each of the nine rooms, provide a calm, interesting learning environment where children's natural curiosity, independence and social skills blossom. Leaders are ambitious to provide an effective curriculum for all children. This covers all areas of learning. Staff plan well for children's individual next steps and make focused observations to help children build new skills.

Children behave well. The manager and staff are very positive role models. They take many opportunities throughout daily routines and activities to praise children's good behaviour. For example, children beam as they are praised for helping a friend or remembering to use good manners after receiving their food. Staff consistently support children as they learn to take turns and think about other people's feelings.

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

• Staff interactions with children, particularly in the pre-school rooms are very effective. This helps prepare children well for their eventual move to school. Staff have a good knowledge of what children need to learn next and respond well to challenge them. For example, staff provide a stimulating activity to cut and explore real vegetables as they had observed children's interest in the home-corner. Staff support the children to safely use safety knives and graters to cut the vegetables. When children ask for help, because this is tricky, staff suggest they cut the vegetable in half to make it safer and easier. This provides excellent challenge for children to build on their new cutting and slicing skills.
• Staff support children's understanding of healthy lifestyles consistently. For instance, they discuss the benefits of healthy eating and good dental hygiene at meal times and during role play. Children copy staff messages saying, 'fruit and vegetables are good for our bodies and teeth'. Staff share this information with families through home learning bags. For example, parents have recently received an oral health bag and another with healthy recipe ideas.
• All staff focus very effectively on supporting children's communication and language skills. They routinely talk to children and sing songs and rhymes while children play. Staff use props, actions and exaggerated voices to hold children's engagement in listening to stories. Additionally, they support older children interested in letter sounds to prepare well for early reading.
• Children engage well in imaginative play based on their own experiences, such as pretending to read a bedtime story and creating a pizza for tea. Similarly, children continue to embellish their models in an exciting construction area. This helps children widen their vocabulary and increase their recall skills.
• Although staff strive towards consistently high standards of teaching, occasionally, some planning lacks the necessary focus to ensure staff help support children's growing knowledge and understanding of the world. For instance, some staff do not consistently talk to children about similarities and differences between themselves and others in their local and wider communities.
• Staff work well with parents to support those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The manager ensures any additional funding the nursery receives is effectively spent to ensure it has the biggest impact on children's learning and development.
• The experienced leadership team and manager demonstrate effective leadership. For example, they have regular staff supervision sessions to ensure staff understand their roles and responsibilities to keep children safe and to extend children's learning. Leaders are sensitive and respectful in supporting staff's well-being, including apprentices. Staff say they feel valued and are encouraged to undertake training for their own continued professional development.
• Parents comment how happy they are with the progress their children are making. They express heartfelt gratitude for staff and value the regular communication they receive, especially how to help their children learn at home. They describe the manager and staff as amazing and say they go above and beyond for their children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• plan further opportunities for children to learn about similarities and differences between themselves and others in their local and wider communities.