Little Firs Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily and settle quickly at this friendly and welcoming nursery. They share warm and close relationships with staff, which helps them to feel safe and secure. For example, babies enjoy lots of cuddles and warm interactions with the staff that care for them. Toddlers and pre-school children follow familiar routines. Children have many opportunities to develop their physical skills and spend much of their time outside, where they make independent choices about their play. Children develop good coordination as they practise their balancing and jumping and enjoy sand and water play. Babies and younger children are supported well by staff to master the skill of climbing the steps to go down a slide. Children are very well behaved.

Children benefit from a broad and varied curriculum. All children make good progress from their individual starting points. Staff quickly identify any children that need additional help and, in close liaison with the special educational needs coordinator (SENCo), provide targeted support to help children make progress. Staff have high expectations for all children and focus the curriculum on children's individual interests to engage them successfully in their learning. Staff know the children well and work closely with parents and other agencies to ensure a shared approach.

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

• Children focus well and demonstrate good concentration because they are interested in the wide range of learning opportunities provided. Older children enjoy exploring and identifying different musical instruments and the sounds that they make. Staff skilfully encourage children's curiosity as they search the internet to match pictures of instruments and find their correct name. This helps to enhance children's knowledge.
• Staff know what they want children to learn next and are clear on how to help them achieve this. They gather information from parents and make their own observations of children's progress. This enables them to provide specific activities to support children's learning. For example, staff read children stories and they look at books together. Staff talk to the children about the characters in the story and encourage them to talk about the pictures. This supports their communication and language effectively.
• Staff introduce counting and identify colours in routines and activities. Staff encourage pre-school children to recognise their name and label their artwork for them. However, children do not have many opportunities to begin to link letters to the sounds that they make.
• Staff plan a broad range of adult-led activities with a clear learning intent. However, occasionally, some staff focus too much on one area of the curriculum during adult-led activities and do not make the most of opportunities to extend children's learning further or build on children's vocabulary.
• Staff are consistent in the way that they manage children's behaviour. They encourage children to share and take turns and help them to understand why this is important. They give children the skills that they need to negotiate for themselves and remind children to use 'kind hands', when necessary. As a result, children build good friendships and play together happily. For example, children pretend to be builders. They draw maps and together explore in the garden to find the items they have drawn.
• Children benefit from learning about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. They enjoy nutritious and balanced meals provided by the on-site cook. They enjoy healthy snacks of fruit and engage in lively conversations with staff about healthy eating.
• Leaders and managers provide strong leadership for the staff team. They provide coaching and regular opportunities for staff to complete training to develop their knowledge and professional practice. For instance, staff learn sign language to further support those children who are less able to communicate verbally. They complete training that includes developing positive behaviour management strategies. This has increased children's personal, social, and emotional well-being.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide more opportunities for older children to link sounds to letters
• develop the consistency of staff engagement during adult-led activities to build on children's vocabulary even further.