Sugar Plum Tree Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily at the nursery. They are greeted by friendly staff and quickly settle down to play. Books are highly popular with all the children. They sit quietly and look at them independently or enjoy listening to adults read stories. Older children look at pictures and demonstrate strong speech and language skills as they describe what they can see. Dual-language books enable children to see how words look in languages they speak at home. Staff use these well as they value children's differences and cultural backgrounds.

Children behave well. They play cooperatively, take turns and share resources successfully. Children enjoy being outdoors, where they have many opportunities to be active and to explore. They spend time building castles with sand and take great delight in knocking them down. Children are keen to help. For example, they find sweeping brushes to clear up sand on the floor. Babies enjoy their own garden and practise moving around and pulling themselves up to standing. They also spend time looking at books with staff, who make stories enjoyable and exciting.

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

• Staff know their key children well. They gather useful information from parents when children start, so that they can quickly build on children's skills and experiences. Transitions between rooms, and to the provider's other nursery site, are managed very well. Staff make sure that children have lots of visits, and key persons share development information with children's new key staff. These effective procedures support children to make consistently good progress.
• Children's health and well-being are given high priority. They benefit from nutritious fresh food which is cooked on the premises. All children in the nursery eat together and it is a highly social time. Children enjoy helping to set the tables and hear staff counting as they lay out plates and cups. They copy the staff and repeat the numbers they hear as children learn to do things for themselves.
• Parents' comments about the nursery and staff are highly positive. They state that they feel well informed about their children's development and know how to support their learning at home. Parents say that their children feel safe and that staff know and understand them very well. Staff work well in partnership with parents. They are currently reflecting on ways to further develop the two-way flow of information that helps to promote consistency in children's care and learning.
• Staff who work with the oldest children plan and implement activities very well. All children enjoy taking part. They listen, follow instructions and use their good language skills to contribute their ideas. Staff continue the same themes through different activities, such as with stories and dough. This strengthens children's learning effectively. However, some group activities are not as strong because staff do not always plan thoroughly enough or think about the age range of the children taking part. This results in some group times being disorganised and children not learning as well as they could.
• Children enjoy being creative, for example with construction toys, dough and craft materials. Older children talk about what they make and show how their imaginations are developing. However, at times, some staff over-direct children as they use collage materials and glue. They tell them where to put the glue and what to stick where, and often staff do these tasks for children. This means that some children are not developing their own creativity, which does not give enough value to children's achievements.
• The managers and staff regularly evaluate their practice and look for ways to continually improve. They gather parents' views and take account of their ideas to further strengthen the nursery.
• Staff turnover is very low. Despite this, the provider follows rigorous recruitment procedures to ensure that staff are suitable to work with children. The provider has good systems in place to review staff's practice and to help them develop further. Staff regularly undertake training which further enhances their already good knowledge and skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• refine the planning of group activities to ensure that each child's needs are considered, to further support their learning
• support all staff to know and understand how to help children to develop their own ideas when taking part in creative activities.