Quaggy Childrens Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The dedicated and passionate leadership and staff team create a welcoming and nurturing environment for children to play and learn in. Children are happy and safe. The enjoy participating in a variety of fun and stimulating activities. They show that they have good bonds with staff and feel comfortable and secure. Staff have high expectations for children's learning and support the different areas of learning through a varied curriculum. Children access a very spacious and well-resourced outdoor learning area. They show good levels of engagement as they explore and investigate outdoors. For instance, children delight in making pretend soup and chocolate pudding in the mud kitchen. Staff foster children's imagination and creativity effectively.

Children have fun dancing to music, making play dough and playing in a large sandpit. In addition, children enthusiastically participate in running races and racing with crates. They have excellent opportunities to develop their physical skills. Currently, the younger and older children are sharing a classroom. The younger children are sensitively supported by the adults. They develop their imaginations. For example, children enjoy playing with small-world animals and in the role-play area. Staff are attentive to children's needs. Children behave very well and show good levels of enjoyment.

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

• Leaders and staff have developed an extensive and thorough risk assessment and operational plan in response to the COVID 19 (coronavirus) pandemic. This has been highly effective to date. For instance, children have been engaging in more frequent handwashing routines and a rigorous cleaning schedule has been put in place to try to minimise the spread of infection. Parents receive daily feedback at the door and get daily sheets that provide an overview of their child's day. Parents also receive additional video calls to discuss their children's progress in more depth. Most parents express that, despite not being able to come into the setting, they feel well involved in their children's learning.
• Partnerships with parents are very good. Most parents express extremely high levels of satisfaction. They state that their children enjoy attending, are making good progress and have developed close relationships with the loving and caring staff. Some parents comment on some recent changes in the staffing arrangements, however, most express that they feel the leadership team are working hard to provide more consistency and there has not been a negative impact on their children's experience.
• Staff have high aspirations for all children. This is particularly true of children who are in receipt of additional funding and those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff show high integrity and determination towards supporting all children to make good progress. Partnership working with other professionals is strong. For instance, staff liaise with other professionals to work on shared targets to support children's future learning.
• Staff nurture children's confidence and children show a positive approach towards their learning. Staff plan a range of fun and enjoyable experiences to capture children's interests. Overall, teaching is good. However, on occasions, some staff do not fully maximise opportunities to challenge children's language skills. For instance, they do not always use effective questioning and encourage much discussion during stories.
• Although staff have recently developed a mathematical area in the classroom, at times, some staff do not maximise natural opportunities that arise to fully promote children's mathematical skills. For example, they miss opportunities to encourage counting and use of mathematical language during role-play activities.
• There is a strong commitment to ongoing mentoring, professional development and training. For instance, staff members have recently completed training about how to be playful with children during their interactions and how to support children to take care of the planet, and recycle and reuse.
• Children are supported effectively to adopt healthy lifestyles. This is evident when they eat a range of healthy snacks and meals. Children have daily opportunities to be active, for instance, when planting and digging in the forest school area and when practising tumbling and rolling on large mats outdoors.
• Equality and diversity is strongly celebrated and embedded at the nursery. For instance, staff regularly make videos about music and stories from around the world. They also teach children about inspirational figures from a range of different backgrounds and cultures, such as Marcus Rashford and Olive Morris.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on opportunities for staff to consistently extend children's language skills to challenge their learning further
• support staff to enhance their interactions during activities and daily routines to extend children's mathematical knowledge.