Park Walk Seedlings Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff consider the lived experiences of individual children. They provide ambitious opportunities for children to develop their curiosity. For example, staff plan a wide range of opportunities for children to investigate sand and water. They skilfully teach children how to explore materials using different tools. Staff encourage children's hard work. Children understand that the process of having a go is important. They demonstrate high levels of confidence and persevere even when they find things tricky.

Staff build strong bonds with children through effective communication with families. They focus on what helps individual children to feel safe. Staff identify what fascinates individual children. They use this information to plan activities that captivate children's imaginations. Staff recognise and react to children's emotions. They provide appropriate distractions and comfort where required. Children feel safe and relaxed.

Staff identify children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) effectively. They make links with expert professionals to ensure that children receive specialist support with their learning. Leaders and staff support disadvantaged children to access their full entitlement. As a result, all children benefit from a suitably ambitious curriculum that fosters their individual needs. Children make good progress in their learning.

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

• Children feel excited to share the experiences that they have at nursery with their parents and carers. In particular, children tell them about interesting trips in the local area. Staff plan enriching opportunities for children to explore their community. They sequence these opportunities into the curriculum. This helps children to deepen their understanding of the world around them and how things work.
• Staff have secure processes for assessing children's skills and knowledge. They identify gaps in children's learning and create detailed plans for individual children. Staff regularly review what they want children to learn. They monitor children's progress through their developmental milestones. This ensures that the curriculum is challenging for all children.
• Staff promote children's physical development well. All children, including babies, spend time outside every day in the fresh air. Staff teach children a range of physical skills. For example, they teach children the skills they need to ride on tricycles. Children concentrate as they learn how to carefully squeeze liquid from pipettes. Staff work with specialist teachers to provide swimming lessons for all children. Children develop physical confidence and stamina.
• Staff skilfully introduced new vocabulary to children through thoughtful discussions. Children's listening is well developed. They understand increasingly challenging words in different contexts. However, some staff do not consistently enhance children's speaking skills further. For example, staff sometimes ask too many questions or do not give children time to process information. This means that opportunities for all children to enhance their language skills are sometimes limited.
• Staff encourage children to be well mannered. They model saying 'please' and 'thank you'. Staff understand that children need to learn how to share. They explicitly teach social skills and support children to make friends. Children are kind to each other and listen to staff. As a result, children behave well.
• Staff provide children with nutritious meals. They gather information about children's allergies and intolerances. Staff support children to try a variety of meals and flavours. They encourage children to wash their hands and feed themselves. This promotes children's physical health.
• Parent partnerships are strong. Parents report that the information given to them by staff helps them to understand what children are learning. They say that this helps them to identify when children reach their milestones.
• Leaders carry out regular supervision sessions with staff. They use these to identify areas for development, including training. Leaders have recently strengthened opportunities for staff to observe each other teach. This helps staff to reflect on their practice and the quality of education to continue to develop over time.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance teaching to support children's speaking skills further to extend children's language development.