Muddy Boots at the Market

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders have extended their settling-in procedures for children. As a result, children develop even greater bonds with their key person and feel physically and emotionally secure. Staff monitor children's engagement and well-being to ensure that they provide an enabling environment where children are happy and inspired to learn.

Staff and leaders plan an ambitious curriculum for all children. They recognise the importance of getting to know children and their families well. From children's induction, staff build important partnerships with parents and any others involved in children's development. This ensures that all staff know how to meet children's care and learning needs effectively.

Children are inquisitive and make choices, and staff motivate their learning well. Overall, staff plan successfully, using children's changing fascinations to encourage their curiosity and exploration. For example, toddlers practise their pincer grip as they watch staff demonstrate how to fill up a pipette with water and then persevere trying for themselves. Older children try a range of raw vegetables in their role play, describing how they taste, look and smell, noticing how they get smaller when peeled. Children concentrate well in their chosen activities. They become confident learners, preparing them well for school.

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

• The strong management team has a clear vision of providing high-quality care and education for children. Through evaluation and reflection, the team supports staff in attending appropriate training to provide the best outcomes for children. For example, baby room staff have extended their knowledge of baby massage and are currently studying brain development. Staff confirm how much they feel valued by leaders and love working at the nursery.
• The staff work extremely well as a team, keeping each other informed and supported. They provide good positive role models for children by being polite and respectful to each other, the children and parents. Older children emulate them, such as praising each other's achievements and kindness. Staff provide sensitive support for children to learn to manage their emotions.
• Effective monitoring of children's development ensures that all staff have a strong knowledge of each child's abilities and next stages of development. This helps them to know what children can already do and what they need to do next. However, not all staff ensure that young children always know what they should be doing for their maximum enjoyment and learning during planned activities.
• The curriculum focuses on embedding children's prime areas of development, which underpins all other learning. Planning highlights children's well-being, language skills and active learning. Staff provide good support. For example, they use words with actions, such as 'scooping' and 'splashing', giving babies and toddlers context to their meaning, and staff check their understanding. Staff add vocabulary and ask good open-ended questions, giving children plenty of time to think, recall and respond.
• Teaching is consistently good, and staff follow children's interests so they remain engaged. For example, young children are fascinated by a toy truck rolling down a slope. Staff encourage them to try different size vehicles and predict which will go the fastest, before finding out. However, they do not use opportunities for older children as well as they could to learn about capacity and quantity, such as when playing with water.
• Staff enable children to become independent, providing just the right amount of support until children succeed. For example, older babies help to tidy up and can get themselves in and out of a sleeping pod. Toddlers put on their slippers and learn to pour milk into their cup. By pre-school age, children understand how to manage risks to cut an orange in half and squeeze the juice for their snack.
• Parents confirm how well staff work in partnership with them to support learning at home. Staff meet children's care routines extremely well, collaborating closely with parents to support weaning, safe sleeping, cleaning teeth and potty training. Parents whose children have special educational needs and/or disabilities praise staff for the support they receive, as well as working with outside agencies and using funding effectively to ensure that their children have full access to the curriculum.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help all staff to communicate effectively to younger children what they need to do during planned activities to support their understanding, enjoyment and learning even further
• build on staff's interactions to appropriately extend older children's understanding of capacity and quantity during their play.