Mini Treasures Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children and their parents are warmly welcomed on arrival. Staff engage them in conversations in English and their home languages, which make them feel valued and raise their sense of belonging. Children are encouraged to be independent. For example, they take off their coats and accessories, find their labelled pegs, and take responsibility for their belongings. Children say goodbye to their parents and settle quickly at the wide range of exciting activities on offer.

Children engage well with adults during their learning experiences. They respond to questions and show a positive attitude to their learning. Children demonstrate their good concentration skills as they take on the role of firefighters. They enjoy painting flames on the doll's house and use foam and spray water to extinguish the 'fire' and rescue the small-world figures. This increases children's understanding of safety and knowledge of people who help us in the community.

Children behave well. They listen to adults and follow instructions. Children know the routine and are given clear explanations about what is happening next. Staff give praise and encouragement, and children respond well to completing tasks for themselves. Children use good manners, share resources with their peers, and understand the nursery's rules and boundaries.

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

• Staff gather information about children when they first start, and plan activities to follow their interests. They use observations and assessments of children, which ensure that any possible gaps in learning are identified quickly. Staff work with other professionals to support children who need extra help. This ensures that all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress from their starting points. However, staff do not liaise with other settings that children attend in order to support their learning further.
• The nursery has recently introduced a new way of planning activities to initiate child-led learning. They provide a broad range of activities to cover the curriculum areas, and staff engage well with children to extend their thinking. However, systems are not fully embedded, which means that individual learning and activities are not always sequenced to built on what children need to learn next.
• Staff support children's communication and language development well. They proactively engage children in conversations and use opportunities to extend their vocabulary. Children enjoy singing and sharing stories, and talk about their home experiences. Staff ask meaningful questions and give children time to think and respond, which supports their confidence.
• Parents speak highly of the setting. They say that their children are happy and settled and make good progress with their language, confidence and self-help skills. Parents receive daily feedback on their children's routine and achievements. Next steps are shared, and children take books and activities home to extend their learning and love of reading.
• Mathematics is woven throughout daily routines and activities. Staff use opportunities to extend children's understanding. For example, children enjoy finding and identifying numbered pebbles in the sand and count their fingers as they put gloves on. Children begin to understand the concept of money as they role play shops and pretend to buy food items. Children blow bubbles with staff and compare sizes.
• Children benefit from the setting's ethos of fully embracing diversity. Children attend from different cultural backgrounds and speak different languages alongside learning English. Staff promote different festivals and international days, which involves parents sharing stories and artefacts. This helps children to learn respect for others and understand what makes them unique.
• Staff promote healthy lifestyles and extend children's understanding of looking after their bodies. Children follow good hygiene routines and understand the importance of washing their hands. Children eat nutritious snacks and meals and drink water. They have regular exercise in the garden and practise running and riding bikes to extend their gross motor skills.
• The manager follows robust recruitment procedures. All new staff complete relevant checks and receive a detailed induction process. This ensures that all staff understand their roles and responsibilities. All staff have regular supervision and access ongoing continued professional development to extend their knowledge. The manager monitors practice and staff use peer-on-peer observations to enhance their teaching skills further.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• increase partnership working with other settings that children attend to promote a more consistent approach to care and learning
• strengthen planning to identify more precisely what children need to learn during activities to maximise their learning.