Northfields Mirfield

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff encourage children to foster friendships and cooperative play, ensuring children feel confident and secure in their interactions. For example, babies take turns to come down a slide and children share resources when doing craft activities. Staff encourage emotional development. This is seen using family photos, a dedicated sensory room and structured sensory activities. This creates a sense of belonging and supports children's sense of self.

Activities like composting and caring for the setting pet, instil a sense of responsibility and environmental awareness in children. This promotes good citizenship from an early age. The setting demonstrates strong community links and is responsive to the needs of the community. For example, they promote dental hygiene through collaboration with local dentists and offer flexible care for shift-working parents.

Children enjoy physical play and staff provide encouragement and support for gross motor skills, such as climbing, balancing and outdoor play. Fine motor skills are developed through arts and crafts, food preparation and independent self-care tasks, for example putting on shoes and coats. Staff have strong relationships with children, promoting confidence, independence and secure attachments.

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

• Staff focus on fostering positive relationships, independence, physical development and school readiness. They use a child-led learning approach, ensuring children are engaged and motivated in their learning experiences. The curriculum is thoughtfully designed to incorporate early language skills, problem-solving, imaginative play and science, helping children develop holistically across all areas of learning. For example, children work on ways to rescue animals trapped in ice. They break the ice using tools and others go and try to 'boil' the ice in the role-play kitchen.
• Staff actively engage with children in meaningful interactions, helping to expand their vocabulary and exploration skills. For example, they use story sacks and puppets to develop a love of reading. Babies enjoy singing nursery rhymes and can follow the actions. This supports early language development.
• The setting operates a strong key-person system. This allows staff to build close relationships with children and support their emotional as well as language development effectively. Children feel confident in the setting and are keen to engage in the activities on offer.
• The setting demonstrates a good approach to inclusion and support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Appropriate referrals are made when needed, and additional funding is being used effectively to enhance children's learning experiences. This ensures that children who need additional support receive the best possible outcomes.
• Parents are positive in their views of the setting and are confident that their children progress well during their time at nursery. They recommend the setting to friends and family and value the information and support they receive about their children.
• Staff are committed to fostering communication and language skills, introducing new words and encouraging conversations during activities. For example, older children lead conversations, particularly during meal-related discussions, showing confidence in communication. Babies repeat words during sensory play, demonstrating emerging language skills. However, occasionally, staff ask open-ended questions, but they do not follow up on the responses. This means that that educational opportunities are not maximised.
• Staff actively engage with children in meaningful interactions, helping to expand their vocabulary and exploration skills. However, they do not always take into account what children already know and can do. Early mathematical concepts are not consistently embedded into activities where natural opportunities exist.
• Leaders within the setting are empathetic and effective, with clear systems in place for staff training, recruitment and supervision. Managers are reflective in their approach to staff evaluation. Safeguarding procedures are well embedded and safer recruitment practices are rigorously followed. This ensures that staff are suitable to work with children and the environment remains safe. The setting maintains a strong safeguarding culture, with clear procedures in place to protect children and promote their welfare.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• plan more effectively to support and build on children's existing knowledge and skills in communication and language
• improve staff understanding of individual children's learning milestones and next steps to provide more tailored support
• ensure opportunities for children to develop their mathematical skills are consistently incorporated into activities.