Southmoor Little Angels

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children demonstrate that they are happy and secure in this welcoming setting. They quickly settle into the daily routine. Relationships between staff and children are warm and friendly. Staff provide babies with nurturing care and sensitively support young children. Children receive lots of reassuring cuddles, and they snuggle up to staff to share individual stories. Children show curiosity and engagement as they explore their learning environment. Staff act as positive role models to children. Children behave well and are supported to develop kindness and empathy towards others. The effective key-person approach ensures that children form secure attachments with key staff. For example, children enjoy spending time during focused activities with their key person and seek them out for reassurance when needed.

Staff respond skilfully to children's ideas as they play, and they narrate what they are doing. This helps to ignite children's communication and language. For example, as children show an interest in using tape measures, staff model effectively how to measure their height. Children respond that they have grown. Children show delight in a 'spa' activity as they dip their feet into the water tray. Staff sensitively encourage children to talk about what makes them happy to achieve their intended outcomes and focus on 'mental health week'. Staff ensure that children receive plenty of praise to recognise their achievements. This builds children's confidence and self-esteem.

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

• The new management team is skilled and passionate about providing inclusive care and education for all children. The team continuously strives to adapt the environment, to drive improvements and strengthen the staff team further. Leaders are reflective and demonstrate a clear vision for the future.
• Staff work well as a team. They say they enjoy working at the nursery and feel valued and supported. There are some opportunities for staff to complete training and attend development days as a whole team. Overall, leaders engage well with staff and offer effective support for their well-being. However, methods of coaching and mentoring are not robust enough to support staff to improve their knowledge of the curriculum and practice.
• Leaders are committed to providing a curriculum to ensure that all children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, develop the knowledge and skills they need for the next stage of learning. The curriculum is interesting and designed to support children to be curious, self-aware, self-confident and independent.
• A good emphasis is placed on developing children's communication skills. Staff hold interesting conversations with children to guide their speech. They also use early signing so that younger children who do not yet speak can express their needs. Staff communicate using clear and repetitive language to help children understand and expand their vocabulary. They engage in lovely interactions with children, for instance discussing who they love at home. This prompted staff to provide a range of construction materials to support children's interests, particularly for those whose families are in the building trade.
• Children enjoy taking part in the different learning experiences available to them. For instance, many children delight in being outside in the fresh air and are quick to prepare and dress appropriately for outdoor play. Staff support children to be curious and to take managed risks in the outdoor area to help build their self-confidence. For instance, children carefully negotiate space on bikes. They learn mathematical concepts of measuring, using planks of wood to balance and weigh mini cable reels. Staff deploy themselves well to help ensure that children are safe at all times.
• Staff know their key children well. Older children confidently make choices and decisions about their play. They are curious and eager to take part in activities. They ask questions and quickly respond to instructions from staff, for example, when they are given a timed warning to tidy up before lunch.
• Staff foster good relationships with parents. They acknowledge the importance of sharing information with parents and do so in a variety of ways. These include verbally communicating children's daily experiences and sharing special moments on an online app. However, this does not fully provide parents with ways to help them to support their children's learning at home and to help them make even more rapid progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance methods of coaching and mentoring to support staff to have a clearer understanding of the curriculum and further raise the quality of practice
• strengthen communications with parents so that they know their children's next steps in learning and how they can support their development at home.