Priory Explorers

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and loved at this nurturing setting. They receive warmth and reassurance from the caring staff. This helps them to settle well and build strong bonds with their key person and other members of the team. Children learn to play cooperatively with their friends while staff spend time teaching them how to share and take turns. Older children take part in imaginative role play together. They create their own ice-cream shop, offering a variety of flavours in a cone or a pot. Children creatively seek out objects to use as props. They confidently use number language to share the cost of the ice creams and work together to seek new customers.

Babies begin to develop strength in their hands and fingers as the creative team helps them to roll dough. Staff sing with children as they roll it out together and explore the feel of the dough between their fingers. They introduce children to other resources that they can use to make butterflies. Children explore the texture of the wings with interest. Outside, children practise climbing up steps and travel down the slide. They smile with pride as staff clap and praise them. Older children climb and travel over grassy mounds and through tunnels, exploring different ways of moving outdoors.

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

• Children engage in a curriculum that is uniquely developed to support their individual needs. Children and families are invited to attend settling-in sessions where they share information about their backgrounds and early experiences. Staff and managers build on this to provide children with opportunities to learn and grow. For instance, they build on children's learning about butterflies by teaching them about their life cycle, with real caterpillars to observe and explore.
• Staff use observation and assessment to identify children's individual next steps. This helps them to plan unique opportunities that spark children's interests. Children take part in sensory activities where they explore coloured rice. They sprinkle it between their fingers and fill and empty containers. Children demonstrate interest in the marks they can make in the rice. The attentive staff support them to use clockwise movements to draw circles.
• All children make good progress from their starting points. Staff and managers take swift action when they recognise that children require additional support. They work with families to request advice from outside agencies. Staff work collaboratively with these agencies to enhance the delivery of education for children with identified needs. Children who attend additional settings receive smooth transitions to this nursery. Staff and managers work with other settings to moderate their assessments of children. This means that children have consistency through this important stage of early education.
• Children are confident communicators. They develop their speech and vocabulary through repetition of stories and rhymes. Staff and managers recognise the importance of literature in engaging children in repeated words and phrases. Children listen attentively to stories. The creative team prepares exciting activities that enhance children's knowledge and language skills. Children talk about the foods that they recognise from the story, and staff use careful questioning to find out what children remember.
• Children's individual care needs are prioritised throughout the setting. At mealtimes, children receive food that meets their unique dietary needs. They practise feeding themselves, and staff sit with them to maintain safety as they eat. Staff understand the importance of safe sleep routines. They prepare children's individual sleep areas with their own sheets and comforters, and check on children regularly to ensure that they remain safe.
• Parents speak highly of the setting and the team. They say that their children are happy to attend and settle well. Parents are grateful for the regular opportunities to attend the setting for stay-and-play sessions, where they can join their children at play. However, staff do not always share detailed information about children's next steps with parents in a timely manner. This means that parents are not always aware of how they can best support their children at home.
• Leaders and managers demonstrate a positive vision for the future of the setting and how they will provide ongoing support for the families and local community. Staff speak positively about the well-being support that they receive and are confident about their roles in the nursery. They receive routine supervision sessions where they discuss professional development opportunities. However, staff are not always aware of how they can improve their daily practice and take their teaching to the next level.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• continue to build and strengthen communication with parents to keep them fully updated and informed about children's next steps and to help them support their children's learning at home
• develop supervision arrangements further to provide targeted support for staff to help them to continue to improve their practice and understand how to take their teaching to the next level.