Kidzgrove Daycare Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are excited and eager to learn as they arrive at this warm and welcoming setting. Staff are kind and caring and clearly know the children well. Children regularly invite staff to play with them and approach staff confidently when they need support. Babies and toddlers show enthusiasm as staff show them how to push potatoes through paint and make marks on paper. Staff praise children for their engagement and talk to them about the colours they use. Older children learn about colour changes as they mix paints together.

Children enjoy being outdoors and show good physical skills. Babies show confidence as they begin to explore and move around well-placed furniture and equipment. Toddlers test their skills as they jump off a small step, landing safely on two feet. Pre-school children enjoy running around the outdoors, looking for hidden dinosaurs and exclaiming in delight when they find one. Staff encourage children to use appropriate language when they talk about the size of the dinosaurs they find.

Staff promote children's independence well. For example, older children manage their own personal care well and use jugs to pour their own drinks. Toddlers and babies begin to put on their own coats and aprons, helped by staff.

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

• Staff plan a range of activities to help children to learn about the world they live in. Children help to plant potatoes, and staff quiz them on what they will need to help the potatoes grow, praising children when they say water or sunshine. This leads to conversations with children about foods that are good for them. Children are quick to mention that carrots and cucumber are healthy and sweets and doughnuts are not, but that they do like to eat them.
• Staff help children to learn about taking controlled risks and how to manage these safely. For example, they help babies to learn how to go up the steps on the small slide and use their bottom to slide down. Older children are shown how to use knives to cut up peppers. They show good skills in this and manage this carefully and with growing skill.
• Overall, staff promote children's language well. Children build their vocabulary as staff encourage them to repeat words from stories. For example, when reading a book about animals, toddlers repeat the names of the animals and copy the sounds they make. However, sometimes, staff do not give children enough time to practise new vocabulary. For example, when staff ask children questions, before they can respond, staff answer for the children. This can mean that some children have less opportunities to practise using their vocabulary.
• Overall, all children benefit from meaningful learning opportunities across the curriculum. Staff implement a clear and sequenced curriculum to prepare children well for the next stage in their learning. Activities offered are reflective of children's interests and what staff want them to learn next. Staff use large trays, for example, to hide dinosaurs within large ice cubes. They hide more dinosaurs outside, to enhance children's creative and exploratory skills further. However, sometimes, staff do not use activities well enough to challenge the children even more in their learning.
• Partnerships with parents are good. Comments are positive about the caring, kind and supportive staff team. Parents state that their children are developing well and that this is due to the hard-working staff team. Parents are encouraged to extend children's learning at home, for example through a book loaning scheme to build more on children's love of books. Staff make observations on children and share these, along with photos, information on children's next steps and how parents can support their child at home to enhance their learning more.
• The management team is strong. Managers recognise the nursery's own strengths and areas it needs to develop further, continually working on moving the setting forwards. They work closely with other agencies to ensure that the provision offered for children enables them to make at least good progress in their learning and development. The management team recognises the importance of promoting staff's well-being. This helps to keep staff morale high. Staff comment that they feel supported and valued and that they are helped to further their learning through a range of training opportunities.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to take time when speaking with children to help children to use their growing vocabulary and language skills more
• help staff to understand how to provide further challenge to support all children to extend their learning further.