Kindred Bromley North

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive full of smiles at this nursery. They are greeted warmly by kind and caring staff. This helps children separate well from their parents ready to start their day. Staff ensure children's transitions from home to nursery are smooth and handled sensitively. Staff build very strong relationships with children. Leaders ensure staff adopt robust settling-in procedures. The key-person systems are highly effective and tailored to individual children's needs from the outset. Children quickly become comfortable and form healthy attachments with staff. Staff have well-embedded routines that help children settle into nursery life well.

Leaders have devised a wide-ranging and well-thought-out curriculum. They ensure children benefit from diverse meaningful activities that broaden their experiences. Children enjoy engaging in various sports, sensory, creative and dance activities. Staff model positive social contact competently for children. They gently speak to children and seek their permission before offering assistance or personal care. Children and babies happily play together and alongside each other in the calm and relaxed environment. Staff have high expectations of children's conduct. They remind children of the rules, such as using their 'walking feet' and offer age-appropriate explanations for why this keeps them safe.

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

• Staff's meaningful interactions with children support their language development very well. They name objects, describe and comment about children's actions with singing and signing. Staff hold conversations, pausing when necessary, so children can copy words and think before answering questions. Staff use alternative words and key vocabulary in children's home languages during their discussions with children. This ensures all children, including children who speak English as an additional language, build their existing vocabulary and develop confidence to communicate.
• Staff make good use of snack times, sand play and ball activities to promote children's early mathematics skills. Children learn to count and recognise different shapes, colours and numbers. Staff count with children as they fill containers, uncover buried objects and play throwing and catching games.
• Staff promote children's agility well. Indoors, babies have good opportunities for independent exploration. They determinedly climb, toddle and crawl over equipment. Outdoors, leaders ensure coaches expertly challenge children's good balance, coordination and core strength. Children persevere as they attempt balancing bean bags on their head and feet while travelling around obstacles, for example.
• Children demonstrate positive attitudes towards learning and enjoy the freedom to choose what they would like to do. For example, staff ensure circle time routines are flexible to accommodate the needs of individual children. Staff instinctively know when children need individual support to boost their confidence to join in. They expertly use children's interests as a foundation to build their concentration skills. This fosters children's deep engagement during adult-led and child-initiated play.
• Overall, staff promote children's understanding of healthy lifestyles positively. For example, children comment how eating a healthy diet will help them grow strong and build big muscles to climb trees. Children enjoy their mealtimes and display hearty appetites. Staff encourage children's thorough handwashing and ensure surfaces are clean. However, at times, staff's practice for supporting older children's understanding of managing their wellness lacks consistency. Therefore, not all older children develop the understanding they are capable of for what they should or should not do to maintain their good health.
• Staff get to know individual children's personalities and backgrounds well. They observe children and promptly identify children who are not making expected progress. Leaders work together to ensure children have support plans and interventions that help them progress towards clearly identified targets. Therefore, all children make progress towards their next steps in learning.
• Staff have a good understanding of their roles and child development. They report that the leadership team is supportive and value them as professionals. Newly appointed staff receive good induction and mentoring from leaders and senior staff within the rooms. Therefore, there is an enthusiastic team of committed practitioners who prioritise children's learning.
• Since the last inspection, leaders have worked hard to provide effective support, feedback and coaching for staff. This has brought about improvements in the quality of teaching. Leaders proactively evaluate the effectiveness of the provision. For example, they have provided staff with radio communication devices so they can share their movements more effectively. Additionally, they have plans in place to introduce supervised toothbrushing in the near future. Leaders envisage this will enhance the existing provision for promoting children's good oral health even further.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support older children's understanding of managing their own wellness to develop a secure understanding of good practices to maintain their good health.