Old Kent Road Nursery and Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily and settle quickly at activities with their friends. Staff have a nurturing approach, building strong bonds with children that help them feel safe and secure. Children enjoy reassuring cuddles from staff and praise for their efforts and achievements. Children behave well and make choices during play. They actively follow established daily routines and instructions from staff. For example, they calmly line up to go inside, help to put away toys and tidy up after mealtimes. This enhances children's learning independence and personal skills, which helps prepare them to move on to the next stage of their education.

Children benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum during indoor and outside play. The curriculum is well sequenced and incorporates children's learning needs and interests. For example, the home corner is changed into a doctor's surgery to reflect many children's interests following the addition of new babies in their families. This successfully enables children to play imaginatively and re-enact real-life experiences.

Children develop effective communication and language skills. Staff actively use Makaton signs and picture cards to aid communication. They bring stories to life as they enthusiastically read or tell stories. Children listen intently, eagerly join in with key words and anticipate the story narrative. They use movements and actions as they keenly sing familiar songs. This successfully enhances children's vocabulary. Subsequently, older children clearly show their embedded love of books. They sit together happily reciting storylines and show each other the pictures in their books.

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

• Leaders and managers work closely with staff, offering support through induction, regular supervision and a broad range of ongoing training. However, systems are not fully established to monitor the effectiveness of induction and training completed by staff so that more targeted support can be offered. For example, although staff understand the provider's procedures and routines, some staff are less secure in their knowledge and practice.
• Older children actively develop their knowledge and understanding of the world while participating in exciting activities, such as experiments that imitate volcano lava. They smell the ingredients and excitedly talk about what happens when they add the ingredients together. However, staff could do more to help children fully understand the activity, for example by using props, books or visual images to consolidate their learning further.
• Effective systems are in place to help identify and support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff work closely with parents and other professionals. They ensure children's individual needs are fully considered, especially during transition times when children move to other group rooms or to school. As a result, children benefit from an inclusive learning environment and make good progress from their starting points.
• Children's social skills are fully enhanced during mealtimes. Staff's inclusive approach ensures all children are supported effectively, including children with additional needs. Staff skilfully support meaningful conversations as children discuss the foods they like, promoting healthy eating habits. Staff extend children's early mathematical skills as they encourage them to count the different vegetables on their plates and compare the big and small amounts of food. Well-established routines result in children respectfully taking turns to serve their food and clear away when they have finished. This successfully promotes their personal independence.
• Children develop effective physical skills during outside play. They confidently use a range of wheeled toys and climbing equipment, showing good coordination. Older children manipulate pots and pans as they enjoy mixing mud and herbs in the mud kitchen. Younger children manipulate a range of materials that help them learn about different textures and have fun catching bubbles.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents comment that staff give daily feedback and use the app to share information about their children's day and progress in their learning. This ensures information-sharing with parents is effective. Parents explain that staff have helped their children to settle well and learn about expectations of their behaviour. Their children say new words and sing songs that they have learned at nursery. Consequently, all children, including those who are learning English as an additional language, are developing their communication and language skills well.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• use staff induction and supervision more precisely to monitor and embed staff training into their practice
• support staff further to plan well-sequenced activities, including ways that help children consolidate their learning further.