Little Stars

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The nursery has an effective key-person system in place. Staff are passionate, caring and nurturing. When children get upset, staff provide them with verbal reassurance and physical comfort. They validate children's feelings and teach them how to regulate their feelings. Children form good attachments with their key person. They look for their key person to play, and for comfort and praise when they have achieved a task. Children are happy and ready to learn.

Staff have high expectations for children's behaviour. From a young age, children learn about being kind and the expectations of behaviour. Children promptly follow staff's instructions. They have a good understanding of the routine. Children help others to put toys away. They behave well and, overall, develop positive attitudes to their learning.

Staff implement a balanced curriculum. They provide children with good opportunities to develop their language and understanding of the world. Staff are trained in early intervention strategies. They support and develop children's early communication and language skills well. Staff use signs and songs to develop children's early language and understanding of vocabulary. They use key words in different languages to communicate with all children. Children engage in role pay with their friends. Staff teach them about people that help them. Children learn about the similarities and differences between people, including different races, religion and colour. They develop an understanding of what makes them unique.

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

• Staff teach children to put on their own coats when they go outside to play. Children learn the skills to wash their hands and brush their teeth. However, staff do not support children to develop their independence at snack time. For example, they provide fruit that is already cut up, which does not provide opportunities for children to develop skills in using cutlery and self-serving. Children cannot pour their drinks as the water jugs are too large and heavy for them to independently use. This limits children's independence and opportunities to develop the skills they need to learn for their move on to school.
• Children have exciting opportunities to learn about mathematics. Staff encourage children to count bubbles and pebbles. They teach children about height and size as they stack skittles. Staff teach children about patterns as they match dominoes. Children learn about distance as they throw hoops over cones. Overall, they show good concentration during activities.
• Children have many opportunities for exciting physical play. They develop small-hand muscles as they engage in messy play. Children use spoons to mix soil and transfer it between bowls. Staff teach children how to move their bodies as they play with large hoops. However, there are a large number of resources available to children in the outside area. This means that children move frequently between activities. It also results in some staff moving between activities and not having quality interactions with all children. Consequently, children do not consistently engage in meaningful play in the outside area.
• Staff implement strategies to identify and support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) well. They use observations to complete appropriate referrals. Staff complete support plans to evidence further support needed and monitor children's progress. Children receive targeted intervention. Staff remove all barriers to children accessing the nursery. This helps all children to make significant progress.
• Long-standing staff teach children with passion, energy and purpose. They maximise all opportunities to extend children's learning. When children play with sand, they enthusiastically teach children about shape, weight and animals. Staff encourage children to share spades and help their friends build. Children learn new language, such as 'elephant, castle' and 'fish'. They are curious in their play.
• Managers are passionate and committed to providing high-quality care and education. They complete regular reviews of practice. Managers engage effectively with staff through team meetings and supervision sessions. Staff consistently report high levels of support for their well-being. This results in shared values and continuity to improve practice.
• Partnership working is strong. Staff have excellent links with parents and carers, schools and professionals to support children's continuity of care. They share strategies and provide support to parents. Staff have thorough transition plans they share with schools. Parents comment that they could not be happier with the quality of care that staff provide.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to develop children's independence skills further for their move on to school
• allow staff to engage with the children more effectively outdoors, such as by considering the amount of resources in the outside environment and how staff are deployed.