Little Scallywags Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and thrive in this welcoming nursery. They settle in quickly on arrival and have adapted well to the necessary changes, including saying 'goodbye' to their parents at the entrance and confidently going to their key person. Children have warm and affectionate relationship with staff. They feel safe and secure and have lovely interactions with staff and each other. All children, including those with special educational needs/and or disabilities, make good progress. Staff follow children's interests and obtain regular information from parents to update planning for each child.

Children are keen to play outside in the safe, newly designed garden. They enjoy a wide range of activities that support their physical development. Children relish digging in the large sand pit, where they scoop sand and fill buckets as they pretend they are on a beach. Children enjoy using apparatus and show good physical skills as they negotiate across crates or climb on soft play equipment. They wear a builder hat and build in the construction area. Children fill jugs with water to pour down drainpipes, they watch as it cascades down. Children understand the expectations for behaviour. They listen and respond to staff and willingly help with tasks, such as tidying up. Children show respect for one another. They offer kind gestures to their friends and share toys as they play.

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

• Staff have a good understanding of what children already know and what they need to learn next. They plan effectively to ensure children make progress in their learning. Children who speak English as an additional language are supported well. Staff use flash cards with images of the routines to help children know what is happening next.
• Staff have high expectations of what children can achieve. Those who need extra help are well supported. For instance, staff develop and implement targeted plans for them. They recognise when children may have special educational needs and/or disabilities, and seek advice from outside professionals. Children make good progress and are well prepared for the next stage in their education. However, children are not fully supported to explore their own and other cultures and communities beyond their own.
• Children make good progress across all areas of learning, due to well-designed planning that follows children's interests. Young children enjoy singing along to nursery rhymes while playing musical instruments and staff introduce story props. Staff provide activities that keep children motivated to learn, including using scissors to cut out paper to made collages. However, some less confident staff are not always fully clear about the learning intentions of activities to ensure they support children's learning even better.
• Staff have a good knowledge of their individual key children, including their development, care needs and what makes them unique. When a child shows interest in the story about going hunting, staff encourage them to act out the story, to the delight of the children. They repeat words, such as 'swirling, swishy', as they pretend they are going through a storm or squelching mud.
• Children look forward to their weekly cookery club, where the nursery cook teaches them how to bake cakes and biscuits. During lockdown, children and parents watched her cooking online as they followed her instructions.
• Staff have good relationships with parents and communicate effectively about children's learning and development. Parents receive daily verbal feedback about their child's care and learning and via an online app. They can also take part in online discussions with their child's key person about issues, such as potty training. Parents speak very highly of the staff and say they are 'lovely' and their children look forward to attending. They talked about how supportive staff have been, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when staff kept in contact with them, giving them ideas for activities they could do at home to support their children.
• The manager is ambitious and continuously seeks ways to improve the nursery. She works closely with the area manager and the staff team to identify improvements to enhance the experiences for children. For example, there are plans to further develop the new outdoor provision with a stage where children can perform.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support children to learn about their own and other cultures and communities beyond their own
• enhance staffs' understanding of what they want children to learn during activities, to help children make the best possible progress.