Mon Ami Children's Nursery @ 84-86 Woodville Road

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy, confident, and engaged learners. Their positive attitudes to learning have developed because the staff are attentive and receptive. Children spend long periods of time involved in activities that they enjoy. Staff play alongside children, skilfully supporting their learning and development across a wide range of subjects. This is seen as a group of pre-school children gather around the water tray. Staff ambitiously consider what new words to teach children. They name a walrus, squid, and coral. Children are subtly corrected by staff when they misidentify a whale as a dolphin. These teaching strategies promote children's rapid and varied vocabulary development and understanding of the world. Staff challenged children to compare the number of legs that an octopus has with the number they have. Children show that they understand the concept of 'more' during mathematical discussions.

Children are given opportunities to learn how they can keep themselves safe. During outings, staff teach children about road safety. At snack time, staff support older children to use safety knives as they cut up and prepare their own fruit. Children use real crockery in their role play. They learn how to carefully handle breakable items, enabling them to transfer this knowledge and skill to their time at home.

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

• Leaders and managers design a curriculum that is flexible and adaptable to the changing needs of children who access the nursery. Currently, there is a big focus on supporting children's personal, social, and emotional development as the nursery welcomes a group of new children and staff. Staff provide activities such as obstacle courses, through which children work as a team, problem-solve and develop new friendships.
• Staff use effective assessment methods to confirm that children are making progress. Through these, staff identify any emerging gaps in children's development. When gaps are found, leaders and managers act quickly to make sure that children receive the support they need. Ongoing assessments are evaluated often, influencing staff decisions when deciding what children need to learn next.
• Staff consider the learning opportunities available to children throughout all aspects of their daily routine. This means that children's learning and development are promoted continuously. For example, babies are given the time they need to walk or crawl to their nappy changing area, rather than staff carrying them. This supports their developing physical skills.
• Staff think about what they can do to support children's growing independence to help them to get ready for school and beyond. Toddlers begin to serve their own food at lunchtime. Pre-school children practise how to work different fastenings during activities, such as zips and buttons. Children are developing self-help skills so that they can approach tasks in their day-to-day lives with confidence and ability.
• Leaders and managers use effective performance management systems to support staff's positive well-being and continued professional development. Staff report being happy in their roles. Training focuses on what staff need to learn so that they can do their jobs well and maximise children's learning and development outcomes. For instance, some staff are trained in understanding and supporting specific learning needs. Other staff have learned basic sign language to help to promote children's communication skills. Staff are motivated and feel valued.
• Parents speak highly of their children's care. They comment that their children are making progress in their learning and are happy. Staff work closely with parents to support children's development at home. That said, further work is needed to ensure that all parents fully understand the nursery's suggestions around important topics, such as healthy eating.
• Children's behaviour is generally good, and any incidents of unwanted behaviour are developmentally expected. Nevertheless, sometimes, staff are not clear about their expectations of children when they approach a new activity. This means that children are occasionally corrected on their behaviour during their play when staff could put preventative strategies in place from the onset.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop ways of sharing information with parents so that they are fully informed about their children's care and are given ideas of how to best support their learning and development
• support staff in making sure that children are clear about expectations when approaching a new activity.