Over The Rainbow Day Care

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children receive a warm welcome from staff, who know them well. This makes them feel safe and secure. Children get on well together, they play well with others and develop very good social skills. Staff promote children's independence well from a young age through everyday activities. Staff teach children about different cultures and how they are unique. They model positive behaviour and how to respect one another. Staff support children who speak English as an additional language through introducing new words and using key phrases in their home language to support their communication development.

Children receive a range of opportunities and experiences that broaden their skills and knowledge. For example, babies play with sand and show delight as they feel and explore the texture. Children concentrate intensely as they pour water and operate pipettes and tweezers to pick up objects, such as buttons carefully. This strengthens children's hand and finger muscles, which supports their early writing skills. Children take walks in their local community, ride on wheeled toys and climb up steps. These experiences help to develop their coordination and physical skills well. Children demonstrate good motivation to play and learn.

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

• The manager has a clear vision to provide a home-from-home environment and is dedicated to providing the best possible outcomes for children. The well-being of children and their families is given high regard. Staff say they are happy and feel well supported by the manager. They access training to support their professional development and to further increase their knowledge.
• Staff support children's personal, social and emotional development very well. There is a strong focus on building trusting relationships. Staff happily play alongside children and help them to become resilient learners.
• Staff provide many opportunities for children to develop their mathematical skills. They use routines of the day to practise counting together. For example, children count buttons into a pot and scoops of water into a vessel as they play. In this way, children are developing an understanding of number and measure.
• Children benefit from hearing stories being read to them every day. They snuggle up on cushions and crawl into tents as they listen to staff read aloud. Children are encouraged to take part in stories by using puppets to represent the character's actions in the book. These experiences support children to develop a love of reading.
• Staff extend children's communication and language skills very well. For example, they respond to all attempts to communicate made by children, they regularly model new vocabulary and encourage talk during their interactions with children.
• Teaching is consistently good throughout the nursery and staff give children good opportunities to lead their own play and develop their own ideas. However, staff do not always skilfully extend children's learning through their emerging interests to the highest level.
• Staff ensure that children's health and dietary needs are met. They provide children with a range of nutritious meals and ensure that they have access to water throughout the day. Children have opportunities to be active through playing outside daily. However, the outdoor curriculum is not as well thought out, to ensure that those children who prefer to learn outdoors have access to a wide range of meaningful and purposeful experiences.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents feel valued and appreciate the 'nurturing approach' of the manager and staff. They receive detailed information about their children's experiences and plenty of ideas on how to support learning at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance staff teaching to skilfully extend children's learning through their emerging interests to the highest level
• strengthen the outdoor curriculum, to ensure that those children who prefer to learn outdoors have access to meaningful and purposeful experiences.