Nellie's Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enthusiastically enter the nursery and are greeted by caring staff, who are attentive to their needs and help them settle in. Staff implement a very effective system, which ensures children build strong and trusting attachments with their key persons. If children are upset, they go to them and are reassured and comforted. Parents involvement is prioritised from the beginning. Staff work collaboratively and gather ongoing, in-depth information about individual children. Because of this, children benefit from a bespoke curriculum where staff consistently plan most learning experiences that meet the specific needs of all children. Consequently, all children and babies make good progress from their starting points in all areas of learning and development.

Regular and fun, indoor and outdoor exercise bolsters children's physical health and mental well-being. Children enjoy bat and ball games, practising their hand-eye coordination and consolidating friendships through turn taking. Staff set up obstacle courses for children to explore. Children run, jump and climb confidently, developing their large-motor skills. Babies develop their independence gradually, as staff encourage them to find their shoes before going outdoors. Conscientious staff remind children that the icy weather makes the ground slippery. Pre-school children show they are learning to risk assess themselves, by walking carefully outdoors to minimise any accidents.

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

• Overall, teaching is good quality. Staff plan fortnightly topics, such as learning about emotions. Staff use children's interests and knowledge of their home lives to ensure their teaching and interactions meaningfully build connections in children's learning. For example, during children's role play, staff ask if their 'baby' is feeling happy or sad. Through reciprocal discussions children start to develop a deeper understanding of their feelings and the various factors that trigger them. For example, children tell staff their 'babies' are not sad anymore because they have been fed and slept well.
• The support provided for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, is highly effective. The dedicated management team and staff support parents with any referrals and put robust plans in place to help close any gaps in children's learning. Collaborative working with external agencies and one-to-one focused support for children means they are thriving.
• Throughout the nursery, staff provide group learning opportunities that support children's important social skills, such as listening and communicating effectively with one another. Occasionally, staff do not consider the planning of some group activities well enough to ensure all children's learning needs are fully met.
• Parents report how they feel their children have made very good progress since attending the nursery, especially in their speech and language development. They explain how transitions through each room are seamless because of the nurturing and conscientious staff supporting this. Parents appreciate the excellent, daily, online and face-to-face communication throughout the day. As a result, they feel they know how to further support their child's learning at home.
• Staff understand the importance of children managing their personal needs and encourage children to wash hands before eating and after playing outdoors. However, staff have not considered how they can encourage children to keep practising their self-care routines to help them become increasingly independent as part of being ready for school.
• Children are extremely well behaved and frequently show respectful behaviours to others as they play cooperatively. Children are polite and mostly say 'thank you' without prompting. Staff praise these good manners and embed this expectation by singing a 'please' and 'thank you' song with children at mealtimes.
• Babies and children develop a love of reading. Babies enjoy feeling textured books and learn single words swiftly. Children bring stories to life as they dress up in book characters and retell familiar and favourite stories. They express themselves and develop their imagination to support their early literacy skills.
• Staff sit alongside babies, providing good eye contact and role modelling actions, which encourage their participation in familiar rhymes and songs. Babies join in and build on their vocabulary and language development. They start to develop confidence to make their own choices of songs they would like to sing with gentle encouragement from staff.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation of adult-led group activities to make sure that learning is consistently purposeful for all children
• help staff to consider how they can build on encouraging children to continually practise their self-care routines and become successful in attending to their personal needs.