Lollipops Bramble House

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children display high levels of self-esteem. Babies have settled extremely well into the setting and feel content despite recent changes in staff. Children show high levels of curiosity and remain consistently engaged. For instance, babies excitedly explore different colours of paint while making handprints to decorate their Christmas tree artwork. They display good confidence and independence skills as they go up and down the slide and navigate their way through a tunnel.

Older children enjoy looking at books and recounting familiar stories to help support their early comprehension skills. Children manage risks with confidence. For instance, they skilfully use hammers and nails when making shapes out of wood. Staff supervise the activity to help keep the children safe.

Children happily arrive at the nursery and separate from their families with ease. Children develop very good relationships with staff. They feel safe and secure in this nursery. This is because staff take their time getting to know the children and have good attachments with them.

Children learn the expected behavioural boundaries, and staff consistently support and praise children, who are learning to share and take turns. Children have formed good friendships at the nursery and are proud to tell what they like about the nursery. All children, including those who receive additional funding, make good progress from their starting points in learning.

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

• The nursery is led by a strong leadership team, which strives to achieve the best outcomes for children. Leaders are working hard to address some of the challenges facing the sector as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as staffing shortages. Despite recent staff changes, leaders have acted well to ensure that there is continuity for the children and their care and safety is not compromised.
• Leaders of the nursery are clear about what children need to learn and why. For instance, they desire for each child to become confident and acquire good vocabulary before leaving the setting for school. However, they have not ensured that all staff working in the setting share this same desire. Some staff are not able to explain what they want the children to learn and why. As a result, the learning experiences they offer do not always build on what children already know.
• Staff are good role models and use their knowledge of behaviour management well to help children learn what is expected. They teach children the importance of sharing and turn taking through effective strategies, such as explanations and distractions. In addition, staff offer regular praise during activities, to boost children's self-esteem. Children are well prepared, emotionally and socially, as they move on to the next stage in their learning, including starting school.
• Partnerships with parents are effective. The manager and staff consistently share information with parents about children's care and learning and provide ideas to support home learning. This helps to strengthen continuity and consistency. In addition, they seek and act on the views of parents to help drive improvements.
• The manager and staff monitor the development of individual children efficiently to identify any gaps in their learning. They act promptly to organise extra support, working effectively with outside agencies to help children with additional learning needs. Additional funding is used well to help ensure better outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. All children acquire essential skills in readiness for their move on to school.
• Overall, the manager provides staff with good training opportunities and mentoring to help them understand their roles and responsibilities. However, there is a slight weakness in how newly recruited and inexperienced staff are inducted, particularly in their understanding of how children learn in accordance with the early years foundation stage areas of learning and development. On a few occasions, some staff do not interact effectively with children to help extend their play and learning.
• Children's physical well-being is supported well. The team provide healthy foods and daily opportunities for outdoor play. Older children enjoy taking age-appropriate risks in their play. They maintain their balance while taking large steps and jumps on logs. They learn to negotiate their bodies in different ways while riding and running around. Staff build on children's understanding of healthy eating through planting and role-play activities.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• make sure all staff understand the curriculum intent and how to implement this to help children build on what they already know and make better progress across all areas of learning
• improve induction processes to help develop new and inexperienced staff's knowledge and understanding of how young children learn, to help improve the quality of interactions between staff and children.