Noah's Ark Community Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive with smiles and are greeted by warm and caring staff. Children separate from their parents and carers and quickly settle into their favourite activities. Children explore the well-equipped nursery with enthusiasm. This shows they feel safe and secure. Leaders create an exciting curriculum and help staff to plan activities to boost children's early literacy skills. They plan activities, such as storytelling, singing songs and saying rhymes. Children join in with actions, familiar phrases and repeated lines. Staff plan activities that help children to strengthen their small-hand muscles. Children enjoy painting outside, messy play and rolling balls. Other children play and pretend in the role-play area. In the pre-school room, staff encourage children to talk about what they are learning and why.

Leaders set high expectations for children and staff. The ambitious curriculum supports all children. This approach helps all children to make good progress from their starting points in development. Leaders take pride in bringing the nursery community on the journey, with children at the centre. Staff are good role models. They help children to behave well by explaining the rules and their expectations. Staff use strategies to help children to manage their emotions and promote positive learning behaviour.

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

• Parent partnerships are positive. Parents are happy and praise staff for their contributions to their children's well-being and education. They say the communication from the nursery about their child's care is good. Also, they comment their children enjoy attending the nursery. Parents describe their experiences as 'exceeding their expectations'.
• Staff are happy and work well as a team. Leaders help staff to follow policies and encourage staff to keep learning. They are ambitious and want children to do well.
• Staff prepare children for school and teach them independence. For example, they help children to recognise their names on coat pegs. Children pour water and serve themselves at lunch. They enjoy learning and are keen to know and do more. For example, at snack time, staff support children to cut their fruit safely using knives. Children feel secure and ask staff for help when needed.
• Staff help children to develop their creative skills in different ways. For example, they encourage children to look at autumn leaves. As children stick the leaves to create a picture, staff support them to use words to describe the texture and colour. This helps children to develop their vocabularies.
• Staff teach children how to care for living things and their environment. Children help to water the plants at the nursery. They show an interest in growing mushrooms, which they will cook. Staff teach children how to care for the nursery's pets, such as stick insects, fish and worms.
• Leaders encourage parents to take part in their children's learning at home. In the pre-school room, they encourage children to bring photos from home to share with their friends. This helps children to gain confidence and develop their language skills.
• The nursery prepares meals that are nutritionally balanced for all children. Staff support children to eat safely and enjoy their food. They carefully manage children's allergies using colour-coded plates and display relevant information in each room. However, before and after meals, staff do not consistently manage the routine well. For instance, some children wait longer than necessary for their food to arrive, while staff focus on other tasks. In the baby room, children sit outside waiting for their lunch to be ready. After they wake up, they wait outside again while their friends sleep. On these occasions, staff do not provide valuable opportunities for children's play and learning.
• Staff assess each child's needs and ask what they want to learn. They create a friendly and supportive environment, which encourages children's creativity, exploration and risk taking. Staff help children to learn new words through language, gestures and repetition. For example, in the baby room, a small group of children listen to a story about farm animals. Staff encourage them to repeat animal names and sounds and to count the animals. This boosts children's communication, language and mathematical skills.
• While some staff create activities based on children's individual needs, this is not consistent. For example, some staff are unsure about the children's next steps in learning during some planned activities. On these occasions, staff do not consistently build on what children already know and can do or tailor children's learning to their specific needs.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to consistently tailor learning opportunities to the specific needs of children
• improve mealtime routines to reduce the time children have to wait and to make better use of play and learning opportunities.