Partou Field View Day Nursery & Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy at this friendly nursery. They move around the rooms choosing what they want to explore and investigate. Babies love being outside. They move around safely, carefully negotiating the trees and twigs. They roll balls down slopes and scream with delight as staff roll the ball back. Toddlers leap with great excitement as they move to the music, using sticks with ribbons attached to them. They leap up and bend down low, stretching to the left and right, developing their physical skills as they strengthen their upper body and arms.

Children have a positive attitude to their learning and join in the activities the staff provide. Pre-school children learn to use scissors carefully as they cut petals from flowers. They roll play dough and make birthday cakes. With support from staff, children count candles up to nine and know they need one more to make ten. This is developing both their small muscle and mathematical skills effectively. The children really relish looking at the snails they have found. They confidently tell staff the snails eat broccoli. They refer to the snails moving slowly and needing to be wet. To keep the snails wet, the children spray the snails with water from a spray bottle. This is developing children's understanding of caring for animals and nature.

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

• The manager and staff implement a curriculum taking into consideration children's interests. Staff find out what children already know and can do. They use this information to plan exciting activities to widen their experiences from home. For example, children transport water across the room and pour the water onto dry sand. They watch in wonder, observing changes taking place as the sand goes hard and wet.
• There is good support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The manager and special educational needs coordinator work closely with key staff and parents. They develop support plans to help meet children's individual needs. All staff work in close partnership with a range of professionals to support children, working with with speech and language therapists, for example.
• Overall, staff promote children's communication and language skills. Staff working with the babies get down to the babies' level and make eye contact. Staff speak clearly and provide children with narratives so that they hear words. Staff working with the older children hold conversations and encourage children to talk. However, they do not always model new words to extend children's vocabulary. For example, staff repeatedly use the word 'it' rather than the name of the object.
• Staff interact well with children and join in with their play. However, sometimes, staff in pre-school interrupt children's thinking and step in too quickly to solve problems. For example, children learn about floating and sinking objects. Staff, in their enthusiasm, tell the children the plastic creatures float before children work this out for themselves.
• Staff manage children's behaviour in a calm manner and are good role models for children. As a result, children are respectful towards each other. For example, when two children have a dispute over a dumper truck, staff gently talk to the children about sharing. The children are soon playing together, transporting bricks to make a station for the trains.
• Staff provide hygiene routines for children to follow. They support children to develop their self-care skills and independence. For example, they encourage babies to feed themselves and older children to collect their cutlery and plate. Children serve themselves their food and clear away their dishes when they finish. This helps children to develop some skills in readiness for school.
• Partnerships with parents are effective. Staff talk to parents at drop-off and collection times about what the children are doing and their learning. Parents appreciate the good communication they have with the staff. They comment their children are developing well and have lots of fun.
• The manager identifies staff training needs through observing their practice. Some staff recently attended a course on promoting the development of children's small-muscle skills. Staff now understand the importance of strengthening children's fingers and hands to help them hold tools. The staff provide a range of different opportunities for all children. For example, babies smear paint using their fingers, toddlers pour water into trays and pre-school children squeeze and poke play dough.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• model new words for older children to help to increase their vocabulary
• give older children more time to solve problems for themselves, to help increase their independence.