Little Whits nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff build meaningful bonds with children and families. This begins from children's settling-in period, which staff tailor to meet children's individual needs. Children start the nursery feeling happy and ready to be part of nursery life. Staff provide a varied curriculum filled with interesting activities and experiences that children are eager to explore. Staff inspire children's creativity. For instance, children create aliens from dough as part of their space theme. Children develop good fine motor skills. For example, they use rolling pins and their hands to mould dough.

Children are motivated to learn and make good progress in their development. Staff ensure that children have daily opportunities to be outdoors. Children access a broad range of resources, such as wheeled toys, balls, hoops and stepping buckets. They develop their balance and coordination, such as when they manoeuvre from bucket to bucket. This helps to strengthen their large motor skills and to gain spatial awareness.

Children's behaviour is good. Staff are calm and consistent in their approach to managing children's behaviour. They positively nurture children's confidence and self-esteem with lots of praise. Staff provide children with good opportunities to develop and improve their mathematical skills. They encourage children to count the number of googly eyes on their aliens, and children access rulers on the writing table.

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

• Children have ample opportunities throughout the year to learn about different countries, traditions and events beyond their own. Staff have introduced Chinese New Year, Christmas, Black History Month and Diwali to children, who take part in a range of creative activities. Children also explore positive cultural images through stories and resources. They learn to value each other's differences and similarities.
• Staff are proactive in promoting children's love of books in fun ways. They create playful interactive story trays with props from focused books. For example, children recreate a baby bear's experience of going to the moon. Staff promote children's literacy further through providing a range of resources to promote their mark-making skills. Children confidently use pencils and rulers to create marks.
• Children enjoy using their imaginations in the well-resourced home-corner area. They busily take on different roles seen at home. For example, children pretend to iron clothes, prepare meals and take dolls out for walks in buggies around the hall. Children use magnetic shapes to create a range of patterns and models. As they play, staff promote and expand their knowledge of shapes, size and colours.
• Children benefit from healthy snacks and hot meals which are balanced and nutritious. Mealtimes are a communal event where children sit in small groups. However, staff do not position younger children effectively to encourage their social skills and abilities.
• Staff plan good support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities or gaps in their development. They work in close partnerships with parents and a range of other professionals to put plans in place to support children to reach their full potential.
• Parents are highly complimentary of the nursery and staff. They comment that key persons regularly share information with them about their child's learning and development on online systems. Parents say that since their children have attended the nursery, their language, social skills and confidence have increased.
• Staff promote children's communication and language well. Children have daily opportunities to listen to stories and revel in answering questions as they recall what was read. Younger children delight in singing songs as they access musical instruments. Staff use and introduce lots of new words that help children to build a wide vocabulary. For example, while children access dough, staff use words such as 'flatten', 'press' and 'roll'.
• The management team implements a number of strategies to promote staff's ongoing professional development. For example, staff have regular supervision sessions and attend meetings. However, the management team does not focus staff's training opportunities sharply on raising the quality of education to the highest level.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• promote younger children's independence during mealtime routines to encourage their social skills even further
• focus staff's professional development on targeting and strengthening teaching skills to further improve outcomes for children.