Shooting Stars Nursery School Kempshott Village

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children welcome others into their play and happily decide on their roles in their game. They share out the musical instruments, telling each other their favourite things. Children ask their friends politely to pass items to them and quickly locate the object. They learn to manage their own needs and access their water bottles independently. They receive effective support from staff to dress and undress themselves with the role-play clothes. This helps them to succeed at their chosen task, such as removing their princess dress. Children also help each other, showing great kindness, and they know what this means. Children understand that 'reaching for the stars' means that they can do anything and that sometimes they may need help, but their aim is to succeed.

The environment is set out to enable children to self-select and lead their play. Children move freely between the areas, including the outdoors. This enables siblings to spend time with each other and children to learn about caring for those younger than themselves. Children learn about mutual respect and give their consent to staff. For example, staff are respectful and ask children if they can change their nappy or help to clean their face. There is a clear intention for the curriculum that staff develop together, depending on the cohort of children attending. The area manager oversees the effectiveness of the curriculum and there are plans in process to build on this through having a member of staff taking the lead.

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

• The leadership team is strong and has a well-defined vision for the nursery. Leaders have a drive to continually improve the quality of care and education for children and their families. There is an effective system for the continual development of staff, including training to gain qualifications and enhance those already achieved.
• Some staff skilfully extend children's play and learning through effective teaching. For example, they explore how they can make different sounds with their musical instruments. However, some staff are less confident in how they can support children during their interactions with them while planning spontaneously around individual children's interests.
• Children develop a keen interest in literacy. They make up stories using their imaginations and from recalling information from books they have read previously. Staff help them to record their stories, bringing in words such as 'scribe' and explaining what this means. They explore how they would feel during the story if its events happened to them, such as the wolf jumping out on them.
• Children thoroughly enjoy outdoor play and spend plenty of time in the garden area. They learn to climb and balance safely on the obstacle course. Children delight in making different colours from paint. They develop their understanding of the colours they can make from the three primary colours, enhancing their skills in readiness for the move on to school.
• Overall, staff know their key children well. However, staff are not always as secure in their knowledge of the next steps in learning for children who are not in their key group. When asked what the learning intentions are for specific children, they are less confident. This does not always further enhance children's skills and enable them to move on more rapidly in the sequence of learning.
• Staff support children's early communication and language development successfully. For example, they use simple signing to aid children's understanding and enjoyment of songs. This also enables children to learn and use other ways to communicate and share what they want to do next.
• Parents report that their children enjoy attending the setting. They comment that they are fully aware of their children's learning and development, through discussions with staff and also the online system. Parents say that their children make good progress, especially in their communication and language skills.
• There is clear inclusion of and support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff work with other professionals to ensure that they make prompt referrals to put early health care plans in place and seek additional guidance. This enables all children to make clear developmental progress. Staff make effective use of additional funding to help them meet children's learning needs and styles.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen staff's awareness of what children need to learn next when they are interacting with children
• build on staff's teaching skills when they are interacting with a mixed-age group of children.