Star Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff welcome children as they arrive, happy and ready to play and learn in this nurturing, stimulating and safe environment. Staff support children's language development well. They provide back-and-forth discussions. Children who speak more than one language are encouraged to speak their home languages. Staff learn and speak key words to children in their home languages, as they celebrate multilingualism in the setting. Babies babble and use single words, point to things and use gestures to communicate with staff and children. Toddlers listen and respond to simple instructions. They help to tidy away resources before mealtimes. Older children enjoy listening to staff read stories and select books from the setting's library after breakfast.

The key-person approach is successful, as all children settle well and achieve. Staff build close bonds with children and their parents. Children express preferences and make choices about their play. They are well-behaved and confident. Staff provide children with many opportunities to develop physically. Babies crawl, stand up and walk and move with ease and enjoyment to the exciting activities in the playroom. Older children collaborate with others in the garden as they ride bicycles, climb and run freely.

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

• Staff support children with additional needs effectively. They observe and assess children when they start and speak to parents to gain consent to work with external agencies to develop plans and support learning.
• Parents speak highly of staff and are happy with the care and education their children receive. They express that their children are always happy to come to the setting and miss staff when they are away. Staff speak to parents daily and offer updates about their child's day. However, parents are not given regular and detailed information about their child's development and next steps in learning. Parents are not always given suggestions to continue learning at home, to help support children further.
• Leaders are ambitious and provide a good curriculum to help children make progress for their eventual move on to school.
• Staff provide healthy meals throughout the day. Children try different cultural foods to help them learn about different tastes of foods and to learn what food their friends eat at home. This encourages an understanding of diversity and richness in other cultures.
• Children are supported to be independent as they serve themselves at mealtimes and attend to their own self-care needs. Staff meet the care needs of babies and children enjoy daily rest times.
• Leaders support staff well so that they extend their professional development.
• Staff undertake regular training, in-house and face to face with the local authority. Staff have regular supervisions with leaders to discuss work and personal issues, to help support their well-being.
• Children enjoy play dough activities. They pretend to make pizzas and develop their fine motor skills and imagination. Children talk to each other and share ideas, building their social skills and language.
• Staff organise trips out to support learning further. For example, children enjoy trips to the farm, where they learn about nature and living creatures. They develop new skills to deal with age-appropriate risks, become independent and relieve any stress they may have.
• Staff provide children with opportunities to act out different characters and superheroes during role play. Children learn about different attributes, such as being strong, honest and kind, and leadership.
• Children develop their literacy skills well as they take part in circle time activities. They listen to stories, and join in with songs and rhymes. They work together in groups, share and take turns and listen to each other.
• Staff support children to develop their creativity effectively. Children make predictions and observations as they use paints to mix colours to explore and create a new colour. They build the muscles in their fingers and hands as they squeeze the paint out of the bottle.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide parents with regular and detailed information about their children's progress and next steps in learning
• offer parents suggestions to help them support their children's learning at home.