Orchard Private Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive with enthusiasm. They enjoy a warm, friendly greeting from staff and show that they feel happy and safe. Children demonstrate a strong sense of belonging as they hang up their coats and bags, and settle in quickly. They choose independently from the selection of age-appropriate resources that are planned well to meet their interests. For example, younger children play in the sand together and bang pots and pans with wooden spoons. Older children thread beads with laces and proudly show their delight at their success.

Staff work well as a team and act as good role models for the children. They have high expectations and skilfully support children to follow the rules. Children confidently follow well-rehearsed daily routines. For example, older children readily help to tidy up. They are happy, self-assured and interact freely and enthusiastically with each other and staff. Children demonstrate a good level of independence with staff support. For example, staff teach children to use a 'pinch and pull' technique when wiping their own nose. Children's behaviour is consistently very good because they know what is expected of them.

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

• Children work up a healthy appetite as they play actively outdoors in the fresh air. They enjoy their healthy lunch, have good table manners and use their cutlery well.
• Staff encourage children to take an active part in their own self-care and become independent. For example, when children want to take their coat off when it is cold outside, staff encourage children to reassess the situation after a few minutes and decide if they need to put their coat back on and perhaps leave it unzipped. This helps children to self-regulate and be aware of their own needs.
• Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities well. They are knowledgeable about children's individual needs. Staff have effective strategies in place to identify gaps or potential delays in children's development. The special educational needs coordinator takes swift action to provide intervention at the earliest opportunity.
• Robust recruitment procedures are in place to ensure staff are suitable to work with children. The good induction process helps staff to understand their roles and responsibilities. Managers work alongside their staff, supporting practice. They have supervisions in place to improve professional development. However, managers do not always offer staff training with a focus on raising staff's knowledge and teaching skills even further.
• Staff have close relationships with children and meet their care needs effectively. For example, staff who work with babies know their routines for sleeping. They soothe babies who have just woken up and provide cuddles for reassurance. Older children know they can go to staff to ask for help and show confidence in their own ability.
• Overall, children's language and communication skills are promoted well across the setting. They participate in lots of singing, and staff talk and sing to children during daily care routines, such as at nappy changing times. This helps to promote children's speech development. However, the noise within the rooms can be high at times. This can have a negative impact on children's ability to hear words clearly, to support their speech and language development.
• Children are keen to learn and show enjoyment in activities. They make good progress in their learning. Children experience good interactions and a range of learning opportunities. However, at times, staff do not challenge and extend children's learning and thinking skills enough, and learning intentions are not always met. For example, during a painting fireworks activity, staff want children to learn about fireworks and the tradition surrounding them; however, this is missed during the activity and, therefore, children do not learn what is intended.
• Partnership with parents is good and parents speak very highly of the nursery and feel included in their child's learning. They appreciate the friendliness of the staff team and how they are supported. Parents provide information about what their child knows and can do. Staff and parents continue to share information regularly.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• help staff to understand the impact of high noise levels on some children's learning
• develop staff training to improve teaching skills so that children have enhanced learning opportunities and make even better progress.