Little Acorns Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children excitedly bound into the nursery, where staff welcome them with a warm and friendly greeting. Children have secure emotional attachments with staff. This helps them to feel safe and secure, settle quickly and play happily. Children benefit from a broad range of learning opportunities. These, overall, take good account of children's stage of learning and their interests. This helps all children to progress well and develop fundamental skills for moving on to school.

Children make choices about their play. They independently access resources that support many aspects of their learning. Staff recognise that many children love being outside. They enable children to freely access the well-resourced garden, which helps children to thrive and develop great confidence in their physical skills. For example, children use tools to dig for worms and balance on planks, which they strategically place on tyres, large industrial cotton reels and crates. Children explore, investigate and have immense fun. For example, they splash in muddy puddles, negotiate and slide down the muddy banking, make a 'mud' pie and roll balls down plastic tubes.

Staff model and encourage important social skills. This is reflected in how well children behave and interact, for example, as they build a train track together. Staff use visual aids, such as a large sand timer, to support turn-taking with more popular equipment, such as the tyre swing.

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

• Staff encourage parents to share a wide range of important information about their children. This helps staff to get to know children and tailor settling-in visits according to each child's individual needs.
• Staff constantly monitor children's progress and swiftly identify and support children who have gaps in their development. They make timely referrals and work in close partnership with other professionals. Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities exceptionally well to ensure that they are fully included into nursery life.
• Overall, staff plan the nursery day well to engage and support children. However, younger children become fidgety as the group story is more suited to the older children. In addition, staff give them cutlery that is not matched to their stage of small-muscle control.
• Staff establish strong links with parents, to support children's learning together. For example, staff plan regular progress meetings, share photos and information via social media and plan stay-and-play activity sessions. Parents receive regular newsletters highlighting their children's future learning and how they can support this at home. Parents share highly complimentary feedback.
• Children learn to manage their feelings and behaviour, such as through stories that encourage them to think about what might make them happy, sad, worried or angry. Older children delight in sharing such favourite stories with the inspector.
• Children are engrossed during activities that develop their hand-eye coordination in readiness for future writing. For example, staff show younger children how to stretch and roll the dough and older children competently use tools with dough. Children scoop coloured rice and use a ladle to add more muddy water while making pretend food in the exploratory kitchen. They place circular cereal onto lengths of uncooked spaghetti, which staff place vertically in dough.
• Staff encourage children to do many things for themselves, which helps them to develop independence. For example, children excitedly help to put on their waterproof suits and wellies. They use cereal dispensers at breakfast time and pour their own drinks at mealtimes. Children wash their hands before tucking into the healthy, freshly prepared lunch.
• Staff's qualifications have an overall positive impact on their practice. Staff expand on children's learning and support their early language skills while positively interacting with them. For example, while searching for worms, staff spontaneously sing songs, encourage children to count the worms and exclaim how 'big' one particular worm is when it is stretched out.
• Staff have close links with nursery and reception staff within the host school. They regularly share information to support certain aspects of children's transitions. However, this is not always precisely focused on how they can complement nursery-aged children's learning to the highest level.
• The passionate manager and nursery owner monitor and improve many aspects of practice, such as the outdoor curriculum. They spend time working directly in the nursery offering staff support, feedback and guidance. However, the training and coaching for staff are not always precisely focused on that which will strengthen every aspect of their teaching and the curriculum.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• take greater account of, and support, two-year-old children's individual learning needs more precisely during care routines and activities
• share more information with the host school, to complement children's learning and help them to make the best possible progress through a shared and consistent approach
• strengthen the arrangements for monitoring, coaching and training, to help staff to raise the quality of education to the highest level.