Puss 'n' Boots Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children blossom in this outstanding nursery. All children make excellent progress in all areas of their learning and development. Highly skilled staff ensure that children's individual needs are thoroughly met from the moment they start. Staff take time to get to know children and their families with a thorough settling-in programme and home visits. Children arrive happy and separate from their parents with ease. They form strong relationships with the caring and knowledgeable staff.

Children enjoy playing and learning in all areas of the spacious, well-resourced and effectively planned environment. They show high levels of confidence when in their rooms and when exploring outside. Babies enjoy dancing to music and copying their key persons. They show enjoyment and focus during story time and join in with familiar phrases. Staff expertly promote babies' physical development and early walking. Babies benefit greatly from daily opportunities to explore the different surfaces, gradients and natural resources in the garden. Older children demonstrate high levels of confidence and independence as a result of the outstanding interactions and teaching. Staff expertly support children's learning and curiosity in the garden, which offers motivating and challenging experiences and an area where they can safely take risks. Children's early literacy skills are successfully promoted through regular mark-making activities, early phonics activities and access to a wide range of books in an enticing quiet space. Staff sensitively support children's social and emotional development. They have high behavioural expectations and children's behaviour is exceptional.

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

• The manager has a clear understanding of the curriculum intent throughout the nursery. This is exceptionally well understood by the team of staff, who use highly effective teaching methods to implement it. Staff work collaboratively to monitor children's progress and plan learning opportunities which are based on children's interests and individual next steps. This is regularly communicated with parents.
• Parents are very happy with the care and education their children receive. They receive regular communication and feel completely involved in their child's learning. Parents compliment the staff on the individual care their children receive and the signposting to additional professional support and advice.
• Staff receive highly effective supervision and training opportunities, which ensures that the whole team provides exceptional teaching and learning opportunities. This is evident in how staff expertly interact with children, using a range of teaching and learning strategies. These include modelling language, demonstrating, questioning and providing a narrative for children's play.
• Staff's ability to support children with additional needs is outstanding. The nursery's special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) and the whole team make use of a wide range of highly effective approaches to meet the needs of individual children. Staff have strong links with a wide range of professionals, including the area SENCo and health visitors, who regularly visit to offer support and guidance. Staff skilfully implement this professional advice to ensure that all children make excellent progress. Staff recognise the importance of involving families in this process.
• Care practices are excellent throughout the nursery. Children learn to manage their personal care, and healthy eating is promoted very well. Babies are supported to wash their hands and use cutlery independently. Older children have fun as they learn the importance of good oral health through teeth cleaning activities and resources. Children develop an understanding of recycling through clearing their leftovers into the correct bins after meals.
• The ambitious curriculum is delivered expertly and consistently by all staff. Children confidently demonstrate their embedded knowledge and skills across all areas of learning. During a game of hide and seek for example, children cooperate with each other, take turns, count accurately to 20 and show a secure understanding of the rules of the game.
• Staff's interactions with children are of a very high quality. They diligently follow children's interests and learning styles, and the way they develop children's uniqueness and character is exemplary. For example, when children showed curiosity in the inspector's identification badge, staff supported them to successfully make their own.
• Children's personal, social and emotional development is extremely well supported. Staff expertly model emotional language, and a puppet is successfully used to encourage children to share their feelings and worries about going to school.