Little Teddies Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their nursery experience. Children are greeted by kind and caring staff, who help them to place their belongings on their labelled pegs and join their friends. Staff present the resources in an interesting and exciting way. This helps children to be motivated to play and learn. Children understand the nursery rules and listen carefully when staff give them instructions. They know the routines well and are familiar with what will happen next. For example, older children taking part in a physical activity know to stand in the cleared area, where they have safe space to move around. Those children who choose not to join in, sit with a member of staff in the reading area and look at books or watch their friends move their bodies to the music.

Children behave well and show respect for each other. They share resources and wait their turn patiently. Staff help children to gain a sense of belonging. They encourage them to be independent from a young age and give them choices. For example, staff give children the opportunity to decide which book they would like staff to read to them when they sit together for a group story.

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

• The management team and staff have worked hard since the last inspection to review, evaluate and improve all aspects of the nursery. Staff have attended various training courses and taken ideas from visiting the 'Best Practice' rooms, set up as a training tool by the local authority. They have developed their understanding of how children learn and implemented a better system for planning. As a result, staff and managers have a greater knowledge of their own curriculum and how they deliver it.
• The manager and deputy work closely alongside staff. This helps them to monitor practice more effectively and guide staff to improve their delivery of the curriculum. The manager has systems in place for the supervision of staff and is working on further developing the staff team to be consistently strong.
• Parents speak very highly of the staff and management. They comment on the effective settling-in procedures that helped their children to feel safe, secure and comfortable. They say that communication between the key persons and parents is very good and many like the online system, which staff update throughout the day. Parents comment that they have a real 'partnership' with their child's key person and feel confident that that person knows their child really well. They state that it feels like a home-from-home for their children and some parents chose the nursery for this reason.
• The provision for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is very good. Staff and managers work extremely well with parents and other professionals to seek early support for any children who require this. Parents are guided and supported to apply for funding and financial support where relevant. The nursery makes very good use of any additional funding received to provide support for individual children and to purchase resources that they know will benefit those children.
• Staff spend valuable time reviewing and evaluating the way the nursery premises are organised to create an interesting learning environment. However, not as much emphasis is placed on ensuring that furniture is organised effectively at lunchtime. As a result, this period of the day becomes busy, chaotic and cramped. Due to the position of the children's toilets and handwashing facilities, the younger children have to pass through the pre-school room to use these. This can be disruptive for the pre-school children, especially if they are sitting together, for example, to listen to a story.
• Children enjoy playing outdoors in the nursery garden. The manager and staff have focused attention on creating a more interesting and purposeful outdoor learning environment since the last inspection. For example, children now have access to water activities, whereby they pour water from one container to another, estimating whether their new container will hold the same amount of water. They use construction resources to build and develop models. Children have fun using mud in the mud kitchen to make pretend meals and potions.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on the newly implemented strategies in place to further strengthen the staff team and help to raise the quality of teaching to a consistently high level
• review the organisation of the environment to ensure that routine activities, such as handwashing and mealtimes, are conducive to children's learning.