Rainbow Corner Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have a wonderful time at this welcoming nursery. Staff greet children in the morning as they arrive and spend time talking with parents. This informative interaction at the beginning of the day helps staff to find out about children's sleep and well-being. An effective key-person system ensures that all children are well supported and their individual needs are met. Children have warm bonds with staff and snuggle up to them at story time, and when they need reassurance. This helps children to feel safe and secure and gives them a strong sense of belonging.

Leaders and staff have a clear vision of what they want children to learn. They provide many resources and plan enjoyable activities for the children. For instance, staff play Bingo with pre-school children to teach them about visual number recognition. Children are utterly excited when they recognise the number and write it down correctly. The winner calls out Bingo when their sheet is completed and shows immense joy and pride. Activities of this kind motivate children to have positive attitudes to their learning and promotes their understanding of early mathematics superbly.

Staff are good role models and have high expectations of children's behaviour. For example, they remind children to share resources and wait their turn. This encourages children to behave well and be kind and caring towards each other.

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

• Leaders meet up termly with staff at the local school, the children's centre and other professionals. They discuss any concerns that they may have to meet children's needs. Furthermore, staff work closely with parents to rapidly identify when children may need additional support and implement extensive plans to address this. Staff take good account of children's needs when using additional funding. For instance, they obtain resources and employ additional staff to further support individual children and their families. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress from their starting point.
• Staff report that they feel well supported by leaders and the manager. Regular supervision sessions and team meetings help staff to feel valued and content in their role. Staff work well together in their own rooms and across the nursery. However, the provider does not monitor closely enough to ensure that every single member of staff has the support they need to fully understand how to use their interactions to extend children's learning. Although all staff are caring in their their approach, some are more confident and effective than others in their teaching. This leads to some minor inconsistency in the quality of children's learning experiences.
• Babies and toddlers enjoy a good balance between adult-led activities and those they choose for themselves. Staff skilfully plan activities that they know the children will enjoy. For example, young children show curiosity as they play on the water and mud trays. They giggle with excitement as they squeeze pipettes and squirt the water out. While others enjoy the feel and touch of the wet mud as they push it into cups. This engages young children in new experiences and helps to strengthen their small-muscle development effectively.
• Staff promote children's literacy, as well as their speech and language development, impressively. For example, leaders choose core books that they extensively study with the children, through story time and art and craft activities. Children learn to recite classic children's literature, such as 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. This enables children to solidify their understanding of the story and successfully enhances their emerging communication skills.
• Staff ensure that children learn to look after their growing bodies. For instance, they teach children about oral health and grow vegetables with them. Staff explain to them the importance of nourishing their bodies and how to lead a healthy lifestyle. Children learn to make healthy choices from the onset, which further benefits their personal development effectively.
• All children, including the youngest, learn independence skills with the support from attentive staff. Young children are beginning to feed themselves during mealtimes and drink independently from their cups. Older children learn to zip up coats and trousers, and to put on their shoes. This helps children to become independent learners, ready for their move on to school.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the arrangements to monitor the quality of teaching practice to identify when to provide individual staff with more training and support.