Little Peoples @ Whitefield

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children excitedly enter the nursery and leave parents with ease at the nursery door. Children independently hang their coats and bags. They find their names or picture cards and post them through the letterbox to show they are in today. This gives children a sense of belonging. The children are familiar with the nursery routine. They enjoying looking round at all the activities available to them before quickly becoming engaged. Staff use children's interests to create appealing activities. Children concentrate on them for long periods of time. Staff have high expectation for children's behaviour. Children are kind to each other and share the toys well.

The children show that they are happy to be in the setting. They look out for their friends and enjoy playing with them. Children happily seek out adults, when they need help. For example, when zipping up their coats to go out into the garden. Children enjoy playing with adults when in the garden looking for birds. The children take turns to look through binoculars, while an adult ticks off the birds they find on a chart. They discuss the colours of the birds and how many times they see them. This helps to develop children's mathematical skills.

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

• Staff know the children well and confidently talk about the next steps in their learning. They use home visits and 'all about me' forms to gather information from parents. These create their children's starting points. Staff recognise the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on children's language development. They introduce signing to assist children with communicating. Children enjoy singing songs with actions. This helps to develop their early language skills.
• Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the setting remained in regular contact with all children. Parents report that staff went 'over and above' to signpost families in need. They created activity bags which families were able to access from the setting. Using the local environment, the staff produced learning walks. This created learning opportunities for families on their daily walks. Staff made video messages to be sent to all children. This helped staff members to remain familiar to the children, which supported their return to nursery.
• The staff work well with other professionals to help support children's individual needs. They ensure the needs of those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities are met, and children make good progress. Key persons ensure they share information promptly to support children in their absence.
• Children enjoy the wide range of activities available to them. Staff support children well to understand activities. At the water exploration table, the children fill jugs with coloured water. They pour this into 'big' towers. Staff members discuss with children the height of the towers and which one is the biggest. However, they do not always allow children to problem solve independently. For example, guessing which tower they could fill with the amount of water they have in their jug.
• Children enjoy a group story session. The staff member includes all children in the story as they hold up prop characters. Some children act out 'heaving' the enormous turnip. Children remain engaged in the story. When a staff member stops reading, the children enjoy retelling parts. However, on occasion, staff do not always support children, for example, through using appropriate questioning, to extend their learning further.
• Parents talk very highly of the setting and the manager. They talk about the happy, smiley and enthusiastic nature of the staff. They commend the support they are offered as families
• Leaders and staff have a good understanding of the curriculum and what they want children to learn. The manager ensures an effective supervision process, allowing staff to discuss children as well as their own development. Staff feel very supported by the leaders in the nursery. The manager has a clear vision for the development of the setting and uses training effectively to develop staff knowledge.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• extend the opportunities that support children in learning to solve problems independently
• build on the opportunities, such as using questions, that enable children to extend their learning further.