Kidzone

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff pride themselves on their very strong relationships with children and their families. The children arrive at the nursery happy and settled. They confidently leave their parents and carers to start their day. The curriculum has a clear focus and builds on children's prior learning and current interests. Staff place a great emphasis on respectful relationships, positive interactions and supporting children's physical and emotional development. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), make good progress in their learning. Positive partnerships with external agencies ensure that children are provided with the strategies to support their development. For example, the community health visitor attends the setting regularly, offering support to staff and families.

When planning the curriculum, the staff consider all areas of learning. For instance, they plan a wealth of experiences to support children's physical development, providing plenty of opportunities for mark making and early writing. Children in the pre-school pick up pretend worms with tweezers to help develop their pincer grip for early writing. Staff use trusted interventions to support children with their communication and language development. Consequently, children talk confidently with their friends and adults. Staff use effective techniques to promote positive behaviour. For instance, they offer praise and clap to celebrate children's achievements. This encouragement helps to promote positive behaviour and self-esteem.

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

• Successful partnerships with parents enable staff to gather information that helps them to get to know the children well. The families speak very highly of the support the children receive, especially for those children with SEND.
• The provider supports staff well-being successfully, offering an open-door policy, both personally and professionally. Staff work well as a team. They provide effective supervision and support for each other, sharing the impact of training courses and helping to upskill one another. However, leaders do not always pay enough attention to detail when monitoring and evaluating the setting. As a result, some areas, such as the outdoor space, do not provide children with enough support in their learning and development. This limits the progress that children make.
• Staff utilise the local community particularly well to provide children with new experiences. They visit the nearby market to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, building on their knowledge of the wider community. Staff and children also visit the local church to celebrate key events throughout the year, such as Mother's Day. This supports children to develop their confidence in visiting new places and meeting new people.
• Staff provide healthy food at mealtimes. They know what the children like and dislike, and provide new foods for children to taste in separate bowls alongside their main meal. There is a clear progression of skills across the age ranges. Babies are encouraged to feed themselves with support from adults, and pre-school children serve their own food themselves. All children develop their fine motor skills as they scoop out the potato from the skin with their spoon or fork. Children in the pre-school learn how to ask to go to the toilet, and children wash their own hands. These routines help to teach children self-care and hygiene skills.
• When children play outside, they are supported to dress in appropriate clothing and this encourages them to splash freely in puddles and play with the paint. Staff engage with children effectively. For example, they support children to develop their early literacy skills through making marks in sand and painting. However, staff do not plan well enough for independent learning. As a result, children are not receiving enough support to develop their expressive and imaginative skills during their self-led play when outdoors.
• Staff interact well with children. They support children by being down at their level. For example, they lie on the floor with the babies for face-to-face conversations. Staff with the older children model vocabulary and ask questions to find out what they know and have remembered, such as when identifying different fruits and pastries in the home corner. As a result, children develop confidence in their communication skills.
• Staff are passionate about supporting children with SEND. They prioritise working together with parents and external professionals to ensure that children receive the correct support. Staff are aware of children's individual needs and they provide tailored interventions to support their next steps in learning. This means that gaps in children's learning quickly close and children with SEND make good progress from their starting points.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the procedures in place for the evaluation of the provision, to ensure that areas for improvement are routinely identified and actioned in order to further improve outcomes for children
• further develop the planning for the outdoor area in order to encourage children to develop their expressive and imaginative skills during self-led play.