Little Ducks Nursery - North Duffield LTD

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children thrive in this bright, welcoming, well-organised setting. All children make good progress from their starting points, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The well-planned curriculum focuses on children's interests and considers how they want to learn. For example, children choose whether they want to play and learn outdoors or inside.

Children settle quickly and have strong bonds with their key person. They enjoy high-quality interactions with adults and other children. As a result, they make rapid progress in developing communication and language skills and in their social and emotional development. Children are well behaved and patient. With support from caring and nurturing staff, they begin to understand their feelings and emotions and manage their own behaviour. Children develop resilience and demonstrate high self-esteem and confidence.

Children develop their independence through play and daily routines. They have good personal hygiene routines, including knowing why they must brush their teeth. They hang up their coats and bags and change their shoes when they start the day. Children help to tidy away their toys and clear crockery after lunch. These embedded routines reinforce their sense of belonging and prepare them well for the eventual move on to school.

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

• The ambitious leadership team has worked hard to drive improvement. They continually evaluate their practice and make positive changes. For example, parents asked for more frequent assessments of their children's progress. This is now in place. The manager provides staff with training in staff meetings. Staff also access short courses online. The manager evaluates strengths and identifies gaps in staff's practice. However, coaching and training is not yet targeted to staff's individual development needs to help them raise the quality of education to the highest level.
• Staff complete accurate assessments of children's progress and identify their next steps in learning. In the main, they carefully consider the resources and activities they provide to ensure that these capture children's interests and support the curriculum. The different areas of the setting are well organised and there is plenty of space for children to move around and play. Staff consider the different ages and stages of children to ensure that they all have good-quality learning experiences.
• Children enjoy play in the mud kitchen. They talk about mud pies and pizzas they are cooking in the pizza oven. Children share their ideas. They talk about how long their pizza will take to cook, and that one is taking longer than the other. Staff talk to children about number, weight and quantity, but they do not always promote children's understanding of other mathematical concepts. For instance, staff do not help children to understand how time can be measured.
• Children are keen to share their knowledge. They demonstrate a broad vocabulary and good communication and language skills. They ask relevant questions and give carefully thought-out answers. Children are interested in the natural world. Staff encourage them to think about the creatures they find in the garden, such as a frog and a worm. Children are keen to know where frogs live, and they think about how a frog moves compared to the worm they observed.
• Staff support children to make connections in their learning. They engage children in activities using garden tools for digging and making patterns in play dough with leaves. Staff skilfully link play to their autumn topic. They talk about the wind blowing leaves from the trees, and that squirrels collect and hide nuts for winter. Staff encourage children to think about when they might have seen a squirrel. They help children link this to the book they are reading.
• Staff work well as a team and promote strong partnerships with parents. Parents say their children are excited to come to nursery and that they blossom there. They say children benefit from staff's kind and caring approach. The nursery provides a 'parent support hub', where parents can obtain nappies, sanitary products and dry foods free of charge. Staff also make use of a community book swap so that, during walks, children can choose a book to take home and read with their parents. Regular newsletters give parents ideas about supporting learning at home.
• Staff give babies freedom to explore using all of their senses. They vary activities to keep babies interested. They blow bubbles for them and sing familiar rhymes. Staff model language that describes what babies are doing, such as 'splish-splash'. They encourage babies to babble and imitate sounds. Staff use lots of positive facial expressions, for example, showing surprise and smiling. This reinforces the secure bonds babies have with their key person.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• embed the curriculum for early mathematics to challenge all children's thinking and extend their knowledge in this area of learning, appropriate to their age and stage of development
• strengthen training and coaching for staff so that it targets their individual development needs and helps them raise the quality of education to the highest level.