Summertime Nursery & Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their time at this welcoming, friendly nursery and play happily with their friends. Staff are caring and help children to feel safe and gain a good sense of emotional well-being. Children go happily to staff for a spontaneous hug. Leaders and staff provide a broad curriculum to motivate children's interest in learning and to help them make good progress from their starting points. Children enjoy playing outdoors and benefit from regular exercise. They pedal their ride-on toys around a marked circuit and learn to control their direction. They like digging in the mud to find 'buried treasure'. Children have fun pretending to be 'sleeping bunnies' and then excitedly 'wake up' and smile as they hop and jump around.

Babies show great delight as they enthusiastically splash their hands and faces in a water play activity. Toddlers start to recognise their name cards and like using these to self-register their attendance. Pre-school children concentrate very well when cutting and sticking. They tell staff they are making a sunshine picture to try and make the rain go away. Children begin to recognise numbers of personal significance, such as their age, and tell a visitor, 'I'm not two, I am four'. Children learn to be kind to each other from a young age. They willingly help staff to put their toys away. Children benefit from the frequent praise staff give them for their achievements, and they develop good self-esteem.

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

• Leaders support staff well in their professional development. For example, staff have completed training that has helped them with assessing children's progress more effectively. They have also learned some simple sign language to support all children's communication and promote inclusion.
• Children behave very well. Staff are good role models, encouraging children to learn how to share from a young age. Children listen well to instructions and learn appropriate boundaries. Staff get to know children well and understand how to help them manage their own feelings.
• Leaders and staff continue to develop the provision they offer. For example, they have decorated the playrooms to create a calmer environment. In addition, they have obtained low, sturdy wooden furniture for the babies, to support their independence and social skills more effectively.
• Parents speak very highly of staff. They comment that staff are fantastic, very approachable and keep them well informed about their children's progress. Staff offer parents ideas for activities to support their children's learning at home. However, staff have not liaised with other providers that children attend in order to, for example, share children's developmental next steps and provide a more consistent approach for their care and learning.
• Staff monitor children's learning from their observations and plan activities to support children's interests and enjoyment through their play. For example, pre-school children experiment with the colour frames and shapes in their science area. They confidently ask a visitor about her favourite colour and find the related blue shape. Toddlers become absorbed when exploring different textures, such as mixed sand and oats. Babies help to choose songs and clap their hands excitedly as staff sing a favourite counting song about a fish.
• Staff support children's early independence and social skills effectively. For example, staff encourage babies to drink from lidded beakers. Toddlers learn to pour their own drinks and smile as they sing their 'hello' song to their friends. Pre-school children help to cut up fruit for their snack. Children enjoy healthy snacks and talk with staff about foods that are good for them.
• Staff promote children's interest in books. For example, they encourage children to use their imaginations when reading a story about space. Children put their hands together above their heads and pretend to be rockets. They eagerly join in when counting down from 10 to 'blast off'. Staff introduce more complex vocabulary to challenge children's language skills. However, at times, they do not always reinforce this, or explain the meaning of words and phrases, to develop and extend children's understanding and vocabulary consistently well.
• Children enjoy learning about the world. For example, they enjoy going on outings with staff to a local library, or on a train to the beach, where they build sandcastles and paddle in the sea. They like visiting the residents of a local care home and share a story or singing session there.
• Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities very well. They adapt activities and the play areas to enable all children to make achievements at their level of ability.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen systems for sharing information with other providers children attend to provide a more consistent approach for their care and learning needs
• support staff further to make more use of opportunities to extend children's knowledge and understanding of vocabulary.