Purple Lion Day Nursery (Buckhurst Hill)

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and enjoy their time at nursery. They play in a safe and welcoming environment. Children's behaviour is good. They show a clear understanding of expectations and staff offer continuous praise. Children are learning to share and take turns. Older children form friendships with their peers. Younger children play happily alongside others. They have a positive attitude towards the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Children confidently help themselves to drinks when they are thirsty and they are provided with cooked meals that are healthy and nutritious. They learn to independently manage tasks for themselves. For example, older children learn to dress themselves and attend to their self-care needs.

Children benefit from a range of resources that excite their imaginations and help motivate them to explore, investigate and experiment. Children have many opportunities to be physically active. Babies are learning to balance and navigate large play equipment. Outside, older children ask staff to play hide and seek with them. While running around excitedly, they demonstrate good balance as they avoid other children. Toddlers practice their good handling skills. They confidently use scoops and spoons to fill containers with sand and water. Older children concentrate well when creating models using construction bricks.

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

• The management and staff team have made significant improvements since the last inspection. The new manager leads the staff team very well, creating a highly positive atmosphere. Observation, assessment and planning systems are effective and children are making good progress which prepares them well for the next stage of their education.
• Children have opportunities to explore colour and predict what is going to happen when they mix different colours together. Staff encourage children to talk about the differences between materials and the changes they see as they work out how to get the dinosaurs out of ice using a variety of different tools.
• Babies show curiosity and interest in their environment and benefit from kind and caring staff who engage closely and enthusiastically with them. They show that they feel safe as they snuggle up to staff for a hug. Children develop strong bonds with staff who know their care needs well.
• Children count and use mathematical language while they play. For example, they count objects and build with different coloured bricks to match patterns together.
• Overall, there is effective support to promote children's learning. Staff interact well with the children and spend a good amount of time joining in with their play and guiding their learning. However, on occasion, some staff miss opportunities to fully engage and extend all children's learning in group activities.
• Children enjoy reading and exploring familiar stories. Staff bring these to life with the use of props and puppets. They make the experience fun and interactive for children. Children take great delight in being a part of the story. However, staff do not consistently support children to learn the sounds of letters of the alphabet when opportunities arise to extend their good, emerging pre-reading and writing skills further.
• Babies explore different textures and notice the marks they make in paint and with play dough. They know that some of the books available to them contain different textures as they feel the pages with their fingertips.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those who receive additional funding, make good progress. There is a targeted approach towards their future learning. Strong professional partnerships and good information sharing with other agencies support these children to reach their full potential.
• Partnership with parents is effective and parents speak positively about the nursery. They feel that they are well informed about what their children are learning and feel confident to continue this learning at home. They are happy with the experiences provided for their children.
• Risk assessment is effective and staff identify and successfully minimise potential risks indoors and outside. Effective staff deployment means that all children are well supervised and cared for.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the planning and teaching of group activities to ensure that they consistently support the learning needs of all children as well as possible
• support children to learn the sounds of letters when opportunities arise to extend their pre-reading and writing skills even further.