Little Gems Nursery Compton

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff plan a range of activities that meet children's individual interests and stage of development. As a result, children are engaged and motivated to learn. Staff know children well. They are attentive to their personal needs and routines. Relationships between staff and children are strong. Children demonstrate that they feel safe and secure. They actively seek out staff to involve them in their play. Children's communication and language are given high priority. Staff are attentive to what children say. They model words to encourage children whose speech is not as clear as it could be, to repeat them and name familiar objects. Children have lots of opportunities to engage in conversation and to make their needs and opinions known.

Staff provide a range of activities to support children's physical development. Children manipulate play dough to support their small-muscle skills in preparation for early mark making. They enjoy the time they spend outdoors as they climb, jump and balance. Staff encourage children to kick a ball at a target and offer lots of praise when the aim is achieved. Children behave well. Staff teach them to have 'kind hands' and not to throw their toys.

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

• The manager, who is also the provider, has implemented changes since the previous inspection. These have been instrumental in helping to raise the quality of the provision. However, these improvements are not yet embedded fully into practice to ensure that the quality continues to improve and is sustained.
• Staff talk positively about the changes that the manager has put in place. They say that supervisions are now more frequent, and that they have regular team meetings to discuss planning and improvements. They also have more opportunities to enhance their own professional development through training. The manager monitors staff practice and can recognise where staff may need additional support. Staff feel that their well-being is important to the manager and that they are valued as a staff team.
• The manager has a clear view of what she wants children to learn at each stage of their development. She recognises that the curriculum needs to be geared to each individual child, to provide them with learning experiences that they may not otherwise have.
• Staff obtain information from parents before children start to find out what children already know and can do and their likes, interests, and routines. They use this information to carry out a base line assessment, so that they know where each child is on their learning journey. Staff use ongoing observations and assessments to track children's progress. This helps them to swiftly recognise any potential gaps in children's learning and seek additional support if needed.
• Children play in the role-play home area. They persevere as they try to place the 'toast' in the toaster. They pretend that the toast is hot and blow it before they confidently take it to staff and visitors to try. Outdoors, children pretend that the playhouse is a kitchen. They collect leaves and stir them in a bowl before presenting them to staff to eat. This helps to foster their imagination.
• Children learn about their emotions. They make happy, sad and angry faces using play dough. Staff encourage children to look at themselves in a mirror and make a face to show how they feel. Children use scissors to cut facial features, such as eyes, and glue them onto their picture. However, at times staff are too prescriptive and tell children what to cut out and where to put the features. In addition, they put the glue onto the paper for children instead of encouraging them to do it for themselves. This does not support children to make choices and begin to carry out tasks independently.
• Staff share information with parents about what children have done during the day. They discuss what children are working towards and provide parents with ideas and resources to continue to support children's learning at home. Staff have recently introduced coffee mornings and parents' evenings to share information and encourage parents to be a part of nursery life. This helps to forge relationships with parents and leads to good partnership working.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• embed and monitor the changes that have been recently implemented, to ensure practice across the nursery continues to improve and develop
• provide more opportunities for children to make choices in their play and carry out tasks independently for themselves.