Little Acorns Childcare Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and settled at the nursery. Staff know the children well. They provide meaningful learning opportunities that build on children's interests effectively. Staff help children to learn important language, such as to describe their feelings. This helps children to feel safe and secure at the nursery.

Children demonstrate a positive attitude to their learning. They develop important knowledge about how to make friends because of staff's skilful help. Babies show curiosity and are inquisitive about others. Older children are confident when meeting new people.

The nursery provides plenty of opportunities for children to develop essential physical skills. For example, staff working with babies provide climbing equipment, such as low-level steps, for babies to explore how they can move their bodies. Staff working with older children provide them with access to large equipment, such as the outdoor slide and wheeled ride-on toys. Children delight in testing out how strong they have become because of the thoughtful help of the nursery.

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

• The provider has worked effectively to address recent concerns raised. The provider ensures that known allergies for children are identified, understood and managed well. In addition, all products and resources that may contain allergens, such as nuts, have been removed. It is now a nut-free nursery. Staff have attended relevant training and leaders have strengthened risk assessments. This reduces the risk of harm to children.
• The provider ensures that the premises are safe and secure. Since the previous visit, the provider has ensured that additional locks and entrance bells have been added to the nursery's external gate. Staff understand their responsibility to ensure that external doors are locked and that they adhere to the nursery's risk assessments. Leaders ensure that children are adequately supervised. This ensures the safety of children.
• Recently, there have been further changes to the management of the nursery. These changes have impacted negatively on the morale of staff and parental confidence in the nursery. However, the provider has taken positive steps to resolve these matters and has recently appointed new leaders to ensure the smooth running of the nursery.
• Leaders have recently improved their arrangements to support the work of staff. For example, leaders ensure that supervisions for staff are effective and include opportunities to discuss individual staff's training and development needs. Staff receive effective coaching from leaders that improves the quality of education that children receive. Children make good progress in their learning of the nursery's curriculum.
• Leaders are ambitious for children's learning and development. They are clear about the knowledge that they want children to learn and why. However, they have not ensured that all staff understand how to teach the leader's intended curriculum. As a result, on occasion, some staff are unclear about how to teach parts of the curriculum. This leads to confusion in teaching and among some children about what they have learned.
• Mostly, staff support children's behaviour well. They remind children of the nursery's golden rules of how to behave. Children ably recall that they should have 'listening ears'. However, on occasion, some staff lack confidence about how to support children's behaviour. As a result, sometimes, children become too loud or do not listen well to staff's instructions. Children do not learn well about the impact of their behaviour on others.
• Leaders make certain that staff promote children's personal development well. Children benefit from the many opportunities that staff provide to help them to become independent. For example, staff know when to step back to allow children to put on their own coats, serve their own lunch and to drink from open cups. Children are confident in their own abilities.
• Staff are responsive to children's needs, feelings and moods. Staff make effective use of books, such as 'The Colour Monster', to encourage children to express and say what they feel. Children's well-being is supported effectively.
• Staff show much interest and enjoyment about sharing books with the children. They provide a wide range of high-quality fiction and non-fiction books that are easily accessible for children to choose their favourites. Staff read aloud to children with animation and skill. This enthuses children about books and the information that they can gain from reading.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to deliver leader's intended curriculum consistently well
• improve understanding of how to support children's behaviour so that children understand the impact of their own behaviour on others.