Little Cedars Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have good relationships with staff and each other. Staff quickly support children when they are hurt or upset. They offer lots of cuddles and reassurance, which helps children feel safe and secure. Children behave very well. They know about expectations of their behaviour and cooperatively participate in the routines of the day. Staff gently encourage children to share and take turns during play.

Children make good progress and enjoy an ambitious curriculum of well-planned activities based on their learning needs and interests. Staff sequence activities well, ensuring that they build on what children already know. For example, children develop good physical skills and gain lots of exercise and fresh air in the large outside play area. They show good coordination and spatial awareness while speedily riding bikes, scooters and cars. They confidently use climbing frames and know to take turns on the slides. Staff provide challenging activities that successfully extend children's physical skills even further. For example, they encourage children to count as they jump in the row of hoops on the ground, and children giggle as they copy staff and wiggle the hoops on their waist.

Children who have additional needs are making good progress from their starting points. Managers and staff offer highly effective support and work closely with parents and other agencies. As a result, assessment processes are completed in a timely manner, enabling targeted support that helps children reach their full potential.

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

• Staff have good opportunities for continuous professional development. They work cooperatively as a team and show high regard to promoting inclusive practice. This creates a family atmosphere, where all children play happily together.
• Children help to care for the nursery pet chickens and chicks, rabbits, lizard and stick insects. Older children learn about life cycles as they watch the chicks hatch and then care for the chicks in their group room. Younger children enjoy looking in the enclosures with staff to find where the rabbits and chickens are hiding and if they can find any eggs. This enables children to actively learn about nature and gain hands-on experience of caring for living things.
• Older children enjoy relaxed and sociable mealtimes as they sit with staff and talk about the meal and events of the day. They learn healthy eating habits as they choose the different foods and amount they like to eat. Mealtimes for toddlers are less well organised as staff move around and serve the meals, limiting opportunities for children to make choices. As a result, children are less settled and opportunities to optimise children's learning experiences are missed.
• Parents give positive comments about the quality of care. They value the support from the manager and staff when completing assessments and comment that the staff are kind and friendly. Parents say that their children have learned to speak English quickly and that older children are ready to move on to school.
• Staff complete regular written progress checks for all children that are shared with parents. However, the systems for managing the progress checks at age two is less well organised. For example, staff do not have a clear oversight of when the most useful point to provide a summary is for each child, to align with their health checks where possible.
• Children who speak English as an additional language are supported well. Staff use some words in their home languages and lots of gestures and pictures. Consequently, children are making good progress and their understanding and use of English are rapidly improving.
• Children enjoy being creative. Babies explore how paint feels as they rub it in their hands and make prints on the paper. Older children use paint and pencils to make patterns. They carefully draw pictures of themselves while talking about their features with staff. Children have lots of fun playing with bubbles in the water tray. These activities help them to develop their free creative expression.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation of mealtimes in the toddler room, to provide more settled experiences for children and enable them to make more choices of the foods they like to eat
• strengthen the arrangements for completing the progress checks at age two, so that staff have a clear oversight of when the most useful point to provide a summary is for each child, to align with their health checks where possible.