Liz Day Care Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and safe in this calm and positive environment. Children build warm relationships with staff. They happily engage with them in playful learning opportunities or approach them for hugs or to share their play.

Children benefit from well-embedded routines. For example, they eagerly join in circle time as they sing, 'Make a circle.' Consistent routines such as these help children to feel secure as they understand what will happen next during the day. Children develop empathy for their peers. For example, they offer their peers a cuddle if they think they may be feeling upset. This helps children to develop their understanding of their own and others' feelings and form friendships.

Children respond well to the high expectations that staff have for what they can achieve. For example, even younger children use a knife and fork correctly and stay seated at the table until their peers have finished their lunch. These high expectations are threaded through every area of the curriculum and help children to make very good progress on their individual learning journeys. Children develop their independent skills well. Children pour their own water and clean up any spillages themselves. Younger children scrape their bowls well and clear away their dishes. This supports children to develop their self-care skills and builds their self-esteem.

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

• Leaders carefully consider what children should achieve through the curriculum for communication and language. Staff communicate in positive, engaging tones with the children. They respond well to children's actions and words, building high-quality, two-way interactions between staff and children. For example, when children are pretending that it is snowing on the toy animals, staff and children discuss together how cold it will be and the clothes they would wear in the snow. This supports children to build their vocabulary and develop their sentence structure.
• Staff use stories well to support children's learning. They read children familiar books such as 'We're going on a bear hunt', and children excitedly join in with the words and actions. This helps children to learn new language and develop a love of books.
• Staff plan learning opportunities to support children to develop their physical skills. Children develop their hand-to-eye coordination and fine motor skills by making marks with pens or chalk, using tongs to serve their fruit, pouring water or sand and building towers. Children develop their gross motor skills by balancing along beams, riding on tricycles, climbing up steps and sliding down the slide. This supports children to make good progress in their physical development.
• Staff do not always consider how to support children to develop their gross motor skills indoors. This means that children who choose not to go into the garden do not have enough opportunities to be physically active during the day.
• Leaders are passionate about meeting the needs of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. They carefully consider their needs and next steps and how to support them to achieve these next steps. Leaders work closely with external professionals to ensure these children are getting all the support that they need. Staff implement the strategies that these professionals recommend effectively. This means that every child makes good progress on their individual learning journey.
• Leaders understand what good practice looks like. They support less experienced staff by spending lots of time working with the children, modelling good practice to colleagues. Leaders support staff's professional development through online training, staff meetings and regular supervision. This leads to good outcomes for children.
• Less than half of the staff at the nursery hold appropriate childcare qualifications. This is a breach of the requirements. However, leaders work hard to support staff carefully to ensure that this does not impact on the learning and care of the children. Several staff members are due to complete appropriate qualifications in the next few months.
• Leaders and staff build strong parent partnerships. Parents appreciate how well the staff know their children and work together with staff to support each child's individual needs. Staff provide feedback to parents regularly, both verbally and via an app. This keeps parents up to date with what their child has been doing during the day and how to support them at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider must:

• ensure that more than half of the staff members hold appropriate childcare qualifications. (by 30 June 2023)

The provider should:

• consider how to support every child to be even more physically active every day at nursery.