Portobello Day Care Nursery Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a calm and welcoming environment for children to play and learn. Children show that they feel happy and safe. Staff provide children who speak English as an additional language with good support to hear new words and gain new knowledge. Staff identify early children who may need extra support with their learning. They give children with special educational needs and/or disabilities positive levels of support and work with other professionals to help them to move forward in their learning. Staff are caring and frequently offer children praise for their efforts and give them gentle reminders about the boundaries of the setting. This helps children to behave very well.

Staff plan a range of activities to help children to learn new knowledge and skills. For instance, children have fun playing with water and staff help children to hear early mathematical language, such as 'full' and 'heavy'. Children discuss different shapes and pretend to make pizzas and cakes with play dough. This helps to support children's creativity, language development and fine motor skills. Furthermore, children enjoy searching for shapes in glitter and rice, and staff help them to develop their knowledge of colours and sizes.

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

• Staff plan a range of activities to help children to learn about other people's lives that are different to their own. For instance, children learn about a range of cultural festivals, such as Ramadan and Christmas. They enjoy dressing up and sharing food. This helps children to learn about different ways of life and helps them to develop positive attitudes towards diversity.
• Staff gain relevant information from parents when children first join the nursery to learn about their interests and stage of development. Staff use this information to plan experiences to start to close any possible gaps in children's learning. Staff monitor children's development and provide parents with frequent updates on their new achievements. Children make good progress in relation to their starting points and show positive attitudes towards learning.
• Staff help children to lead healthy lifestyles. For instance, they provide healthy snacks and plan activities, such as throwing balls and riding on wheeled toys, to help their coordination and physical well-being.
• Staff support children to learn about their emotions. For instance, staff talk about their own feelings in a positive way and ask children about how they feel. This helps to support children's personal and emotional development. In addition, children develop good bonds with staff.
• The manager and staff form good relationships with parents and carers. Parents are happy with their children's experiences at the nursery. They state that they feel well informed about their children's learning and progress. They also comment that staff are kind and welcoming. Furthermore, they explain that their children are making good progress.
• The manager works closely with other professionals to build on the quality of the nursery. For instance, staff implement suggestions for improvement from the early years team at the local authority. In addition, staff receive mentoring from the manager to develop their knowledge and practice. Overall, staff understand how to support children's development across the different areas of learning. However, they do not fully maximise professional development opportunities to develop their curriculum knowledge to the highest level.
• Although staff interactions with children are generally good, on occasions, some staff do not always allow children to take the lead in play. This sometimes reduces opportunities for children to fully develop their imagination and express their own ideas.
• Staff introduce children to new language during play. For instance, they read books and sing songs to support their understanding of new words. However, at times during conversations, some staff do not always allow children enough time to process and respond to their questions before offering an answer for them. This sometimes reduces children's opportunities to fully develop their thinking skills to the highest level.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance staff's opportunities for ongoing professional development to support them to further embed their knowledge of the curriculum to an even higher level
• allow children to take the lead more during play to develop their imagination further
• strengthen staff's interactions with children to allow them more time to think and respond to their questions to help develop children's thinking skills and language development further.