Salisbury Day Care

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are supported to settle at the nursery by kind and considerate staff. Staff reassure children as they arrive with warm greetings and soothing words, helping them to feel safe and secure. They know children well and adapt their care and learning approaches to children's individual needs. For example, staff recognise that children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) benefit from some individual time with staff when they arrive to help them to settle into the routines of the day.

Staff find out and plan for children's interests and learning needs through interesting topics. Staff provide opportunities for children to develop the skills required for the future. For example, children manipulate play dough and mix paint to make marks with paintbrushes. This helps to strengthen children's arm and hand muscles for later writing. Children develop a keen interest in reading. They choose to look at books and listen to many stories read by staff.

Staff follow plans that clearly identify the knowledge children will learn and in what order. They check regularly what children know, understand and can do. They use this information to decide what children need to learn next. Children, including those with SEND, and who speak English as an additional language, make good progress.

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

• The manager and staff implement an ambitious and well-designed curriculum, offering a variety of both adult- and child-led learning. However, sometimes during child-led learning, staff do not identify opportunities in children's play to take their learning to the next level. For instance, staff do not consistently challenge children's learning to build on what they know and can already do. Therefore, children are not consistently provided with high levels of challenge throughout the day.
• Staff promote children's communication well. They use strategies shared with them by professionals to support children's progress. They clearly narrate and emphasise words for children to copy. Staff describe objects and actions for children as they play with them. Children learn to correctly pronounce words. Children enjoy listening to and joining in with familiar stories.
• Staff support younger children's listening skills well as they use musical instruments to make different sounds and change the beat of nursery rhymes. Older children regularly use and hear different letter sounds in their play. For example, children enthusiastically find their initial letter from stickers as they decorate a crown.
• The manager is enthusiastic in her role. She uses various strategies to lead her staff team well. She provides effective supervision and support to staff. However, the coaching and mentoring of senior staff who are new to their role are still being established. Therefore, the monitoring and deployment of staff is not consistently effective. Staff say that they enjoy their roles and feel valued and supported.
• Children are provided with ample opportunities to be physically active and have daily access to the well-resourced garden. Children develop their physical skills as they ride bikes and scooters. Children are keen to take turns and eagerly ask for the timer to share the bikes with their friends.
• Staff model expected behaviour and place a great emphasis on reward and praise when children behave positively. Children are learning to be independent as they put their coats on for outdoor play and enthusiastically scrape their plates after mealtimes.
• Partnership with parents is good. Parents are positive about the setting and the care and attention their children receive from staff. They highlight how much progress their children have made over time. Parents appreciate the information they regularly receive about their children's progress and the ideas for how to support their learning at home. Staff work closely with parents and professionals from other agencies to identify children with SEND early.
• The leaders and manager are dedicated and committed. They have a clear and ambitious vision for the nursery, which is shared with the staff. They are reflective of practice and seek to continually improve the nursery and make enhancements, where necessary, based on the needs of the current cohort of children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to strengthen their teaching strategies to consistently challenge and extend children's learning
• strengthen the coaching and mentoring of new senior staff to ensure that all interactions and experiences for children are of equally high quality.