Kids World Goldthorpe

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children bound into the nursery and receive a friendly, cheerful greeting. They are familiar with consistent daily routines that help them to feel happy and secure. For example, children are eager to choose to play outside or to sit down for breakfast, where they develop their independence skills. For example, children select their preferred food item and pour milk onto their cereal.

Overall, staff plan effective educational programmes that help children to make good progress and be ready for starting school. For example, children enjoy daily small-group time. They listen to a story and sing songs, which helps to develop their social, speech and listening skills. Staff enthusiastically sing and model actions. They provide props and shorter stories for younger children, which increases the children's enjoyment and engagement. Three- and four-year-old children show particularly high levels of confidence and are engrossed in activities. For example, they develop their imagination skills while moulding dough into different shapes.

Staff are good role models, who encourage essential social skills. This is reflected in children's very positive behaviour and friendships. For example, children work cooperatively with staff to construct a ball run using plastic guttering and slats of wood. Staff positively reinforce behavioural expectations. For example, they use sand timers to encourage children to learn to take turns and instil the motto of 'choose it, use, it, put it away' to encourage children to help tidy up.

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

• Overall, staff plan a broad and stimulating curriculum. Provision has recently been extended to two-year-old children, but curriculum thinking, planning and teaching have not yet been fully adapted. Some activities and care routines do not help younger children to make the best possible progress.
• Through their constant assessments, staff swiftly identify and support children with a developmental delay. They put in place excellent early interventions, including meticulous support plans, and work extremely closely with other professionals and parents. Children benefit greatly from small-group or one-to-one sessions in the 'sensory' room.
• Staff have an in-depth understanding of the needs of the local community and children's families. They use additional funding well to improve outcomes for children. They work in excellent partnership with other agencies to promote children's safety and welfare.
• Children, especially those who prefer to be outside or have less outdoor access at home, benefit greatly from free access to the nursery garden. Staff ensure that children develop their skills and extend their learning across the curriculum while playing happily outside. For example, through negotiating the climbing wall, riding on wheeled toys, filling pipettes with water and scooping mud, children develop their physical skills. They engage in early writing using chunky chalks. Staff use made-up songs and narrative during water play, which helps to develop children's mathematical understanding. Children learn about the world around them as they use magnifying glasses to search for, and investigate, insects.
• Parents share important information in readiness for children starting nursery. Each child has a key person and is generally very settled. However, staff do not consistently recognise when their key children require additional attention and support from them to help them engage fully in activities and build closer attachments.
• Staff continually share children's progress with parents. They encourage parents to support this, for instance through activity sessions and speech and language initiatives, such as 'Travelling Ted' and a lending library.
• Staff help parents to follow the nursery ethos of promoting healthy eating and children's good oral health. For example, when children do not have the hearty freshly cooked lunch, staff encourage healthy lunch box items and display information about the content sugar in particular foods and drinks.
• Staff support children to manage and express their emotions effectively. They read stories and encourage older children to use their words to tell their friends if they do not like something and how this makes them feel.
• Staff's qualifications and continued professional development generally have a positive impact on their practice. However, the monitoring of staff's practice is not fully effective or focused in identifying what further training or coaching is needed to improve outcomes for children even further.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• adapt the curriculum, planning and teaching so that the individual learning and care needs and interests of two-year-old children are taken into greater account
• strengthen the key-person system so that staff consistently provide support for children to promote their engagement and emotional well-being further
• improve arrangements for monitoring staff practice and use these to identify and provide well-focused staff training and coaching to improve outcomes for children even further.