Quarry House

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a home-from-home environment, where children feel happy and safe. Children arrive happily and are warmly greeted by cheerful staff at this small, friendly setting. Staff build strong, positive relationships with the children and their families. The dedicated staff strive to provide children with the best start in life. Staff support children to become independent, confident, and able to regulate their emotions. They are good at supporting children's emotional well-being. Staff ensure that children leave here with the skills, confidence, and self-worth to thrive in the next stage of their journey. From the start, children form extremely secure emotional attachments with the nurturing staff. Staff are especially caring and sensitive to the children's needs and personal situations. They offer limitless support to children and families when required.

Staff have realistic expectations for behaviour, which are based on children's ages and stages of development. Overall, children play happily and are learning to be kind to each other. Children make independent choices of where they prefer to play. They show high levels of curiosity and a positive attitude to learning. For instance, they explore how the water changes colour when the tea bag is added, and experiment with compacting flour into different containers. Staff interactions support children to build positive relationships with each other.

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

• The curriculum gives high priority to nurturing children's emotional security. Staff provide a calm, nurturing environment, quickly identifying children who need additional support in managing their feelings. Staff gather information from parents and use their own observations of children to provide the support children need to settle quickly into nursery life. This continues as they move through the nursery into new rooms.
• Staff provide some activities that support children's physical development well. For example, children enjoy music and movement and using equipment in the garden. However, although children spend time engaged in these activities, staff do not focus on this area of development as strongly as other areas of the curriculum. Therefore, although children generally progress well in their physical development, they are not consistently challenged.
• Staff interact well with the children, sitting at their level and modelling play. They frequently use repeated single words and descriptive words to enhance children's communication and language. For example, they say it is 'swirly' and 'curly' as they describe the changing shape of the pipe cleaner, as they bend it around their finger. Staff are enthusiastic and engage children well in story sessions. Babies turn pages and move flaps in sensory books to look at the variety of pictures. Toddlers sing and dance to nursery rhymes and begin to sing the words.
• Children benefit from many experiences that put them at the heart of the local community and broaden their understanding of the wider world. Staff help children to understand the importance of fundraising and charity work. Parents and children help to collect food for the local food bank by donating an item of food each day during December.
• All staff know the children well and have a good understanding of child development and where children are in their progress. The quality of teaching is good. The education programme ensures learning for all participating. This means all children achieve good outcomes and are prepared for their transition to school.
• The setting has a strong partnership with parents. Staff keep parents well informed about their children's daily routine. Parents say that they are happy with the level of care their children receive and that they are confident that their children are safe and well looked after by the supportive staff. However, leaders do not ensure that communication between the nursery and home is always effective. This means that some parents lack clear information about children's learning and development and how they can further support this at home.
• Leaders and managers support staff well-being by ensuring that they have the support they need when they need it. There are robust induction processes in place, which help staff understand what is expected of them. Regular checks are completed on the quality of the practice through peer observations and supervision.
• Children enjoy home-cooked, healthy meals. Staff provide ingredients for children to cook at home, and parents are supported by staff who share healthy recipes and meal ideas with parents. This promotes shared cooking experiences between parents and children, and children learn about healthy food choices from an early age.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the implementation of the intended curriculum to consistently extend and challenge children's physical development
• enhance partnerships with parents to improve the two-way flow of information regarding children's learning and development and to support parents to continue their child's learning at home.