Partou Kingsway Day Nursery & Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The curriculum and inviting play spaces encourage children to make choices about their play. Staff skilfully use all opportunities to develop children's communication and language skills, for example, in their imaginative play. The curriculum builds on children's interests. For example, children are very keen to use the watercolours to paint their nails in the 'nail bar'. They thoroughly enjoy painting their own, each other's and the ice hands' nails.

Children are engaged in their learning, and they show curiosity in living things. They investigate well, using magnifying glasses, laminated pictures and collection pots to explore further. Children use language well to describe what they see and when they have seen them before. Staff interact well, repeating sentences accurately and introducing new vocabulary for children to use in their independent learning.

Children benefit greatly from positive interactions from staff, who know them well. Children lead their play and staff help them to build on their knowledge. For example, after collecting bugs in the garden, children thoroughly enjoy creating the bugs they have seen with the play dough. They manipulate the dough, developing good small-muscle skills. They listen well to instructions and respond confidently to posed questions, recalling their previous learning. Children show pride in their completed models.

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

• The well-designed curriculum focuses on preparing children for their future learning. In particular, staff focus on supporting children's emotional welfare. There are numerous opportunities for children to build on what they know about emotions, to explore their own feelings and to think of others. For example, children love listening to the 'Colour monster' story and carefully think about the different emotions and how these may look in others.
• There are effective arrangements to ensure that all staff evaluate focused activities, assess children's attainment and reflect on learning environments. Leaders monitor this successfully, enabling all children to make the progress of which they are capable. This includes the targeted spending of any additional funding to meet children's individual needs.
• The provider ensures that staff have the skills to fulfil their roles. For example, the special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) provides good coaching to staff to help them implement the individual learning plans for each child. There is effective partnership with parents and other professionals, which helps children to make good progress from their starting points.
• On occasion, staff do not help children to solve problems independently. For example, when children struggle to build sandcastles in the dry sand, staff offer solutions too quickly and suggest adding water without encouraging children to think for themselves.
• Children form strong bonds with caring and approachable staff. Staff treat children respectfully, for example, asking permission before applying sun cream. They deal with toileting accidents sensitively. Staff support children well to gain confidence in their toilet training. They know the children well and meet their care needs efficiently.
• There are good partnerships with parents. Staff communicate well, sharing information regularly about children's daily routines, learning and their next steps. Staff show good ideas to further entice learning at home, such as the lending library to encourage storytelling and children's communication and language skills.
• Children's safety is paramount. The provider ensures that all staff know, understand and implement policies and procedures to keep children safe. For example, children are collected by known, suitable and authorised adults. Staff deploy themselves well to ensure that children always remain supervised. On occasion, staff do not provide clear explanations to help children understand why some actions, such as twirling a gardening cane, pose a risk to help them keep themselves and their friends safe.
• The provider has an ethos of empowering staff and providing good-quality training. Staff value the support, guidance and coaching they receive from a knowledgeable leadership team. There is a high focus on retaining staff, ensuring that their workloads remain balanced and their mental health is of high importance.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide children with clear explanations to help them keep themselves and others safe
• build on opportunities to encourage children to think critically and solve problems for themselves.