Little Owls Nursery Burley Park

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and settled. Staff understand their needs and help them to quickly settle and build positive relationships. Children show that they feel safe and secure. Staff care for them as they communicate their needs to them and go to them for cuddles and reassurance or to read their favourite book.

Children's behaviour is mostly good. Staff communicate their expectations to children, such as sitting at the table to eat, and they praise them when they do this. When children do struggle to regulate their own emotions and behaviour, staff help them to understand how their behaviour might make others feel. In addition, children are praised for kindness, honesty, forgiveness, determination and self-control. This is then displayed on the 'praise board' to celebrate these aspects of children's character. This is helping children to prepare for life in modern Britain as they get older.

Children demonstrate their physical skills by riding wheeled toys, climbing in and out of tyres and running with their friends. Children skilfully hit balls with bats and celebrate as they hit the ball as far as they can. They use mats outdoors to practise their forward rolls. Staff respond to children's developing interest in dinosaurs to further support their physical development. For example, children make dinosaur food with cooking utensils and draw dinosaurs with chunky chalks.

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

• Managers deliver an ambitious curriculum, which builds on what children already know and can do. They consider children's backgrounds and their prior experiences. For example, managers have recognised that children do not have many opportunities for outdoor play in their homes. They understand that this means children have limited opportunities to develop their physical skills. Managers ensure that they tailor the curriculum to reduce any gaps in learning.
• Staff model new vocabulary to support children's language and communication development. They comment on what children are doing as they play and introduce new words, such as 'giraffe', 'elephant' and 'snake', as they share books with children. Skilled bilingual staff support children who speak English as an additional language to make progress alongside their peers.
• During targeted group activities, staff use peg boards to demonstrate patterns and sequencing. Children then have a go at making their own sequences of colour. However, during child-led play, staff do not consistently identify opportunities to start to teach children mathematical language. For example, as children pour water from one container to another, staff do not engage with children to teach them concepts such as 'full' or 'empty'. This occasionally limits children's early understanding of simple mathematical concepts.
• The majority of staff ask children open-ended questions to support children to problem-solve and use their critical-thinking skills. For example, staff ask children what resources they might need to complete their models. They make statements such as 'I wonder' and 'what if' to help children think and test out their ideas.
• Parents speak highly of the nursery and its staff team. They chose the nursery because of its good reputation in the local area. They describe the skills that their children have developed while at the nursery, such as increased vocabulary and developing an interest in books and stories. They comment that communication is good and that staff support them in all aspects of their lives when they need extra support.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities are very well supported to make continuous progress. Staff know them well and provide targeted interventions to support their ongoing development. They benefit from small-group sessions, where they learn how to follow routines and instructions.
• Managers support staff's health and well-being. They use supervision sessions and observations of staff to identify weaknesses and gaps in children's learning, identifying training to support this. However, managers are yet to ensure that these performance management processes are fully embedded. At present, some inconsistencies in staff's teaching skills across the curriculum remain. This prevents children from making even better progress.
• Children in receipt of early years pupil premium funding benefit from a wide range of additional experiences, which positively impacts on their development. For example, children visit outdoor centres and enjoy creative and investigative activities, which supports them to understand the wider world. This ensures that these children do not fall behind their peers.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop staff confidence to teach children early mathematical concepts during child-led play
• strengthen existing performance management processes to ensure that teaching is of a consistently high quality for all children.