Sunrise Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create an extremely welcoming and nurturing environment. They greet children warmly on arrival, with big smiles and kind words. This sets the tone for the day. Throughout the day, children and staff look equally as happy to be there. This positive environment helps children feel very safe and secure.

Staff are good role models. They are polite and helpful to each other. Children learn well from their good example. They include each other in their play and help each other out, such as when tidying up or finding toys and resources to use. Children behave well for their age. They understand the routines of the nursery day and cooperate happily with these. This all adds to the calm, yet purposeful, atmosphere that is apparent across the nursery.

Staff plan and deliver an effective and well-considered curriculum that ensures that, over time, children gain a wide range of skills and knowledge. If extra support is needed for individual children this is put in place effectively and promptly. By the time children start school, they are more than ready for the move. This is because they have learnt to do lots of things for themselves, to hold thoughtful conversations, to make their needs known and to approach their learning with enthusiasm and confidence.

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

• Across the nursery, children are supported very well in their language development. Staff working with babies introduce single words and sounds. Toddlers learn to link words together. Older children learn to listen to each other and express their needs and opinions. All children have daily opportunities to listen to stories and join in with songs.
• Staff plan carefully how they will use activities to extend children's knowledge. For example, staff working with pre-school children use their interest in drawing to extend their imagination. Staff encourage children to talk about what they are drawing and skilfully encourage them to use words and mark-making to tell a story. This helps children understand how stories are structured and means they are developing useful skills before they start more formal story writing at school.
• Toddlers and pre-school-aged children take part in large-group activities. Sometimes these are well-planned and maintain children's attention effectively. However, sometimes they are too long or there are too many interruptions for all children to maintain focus and get the most learning from these times.
• Children approach their learning with a positive attitude. This is because staff make learning fun as well as suitably challenging. For example, children focus hard as they make badges to represent different 'people who help us', recalling what they have already been taught about this topic.
• Throughout the nursery, children show that they feel emotionally secure and trust the staff to take good care of them. Staff build these bonds through the care and attention they give to children. For example, staff working with toddlers sing to children as they change their nappies. They soothe them to sleep and greet them with gentle cuddles as they awake. Staff working with babies are especially adept at creating a home-from-home environment. Babies show they are extremely relaxed, content and feel very safe.
• Parents cannot speak highly enough of the nursery. They are full of praise for the staff and the kindness they show children and families. They know a lot about what their children are learning at nursery. This means they are able to build further on this learning at home.
• Leaders want the best for the children in their care. When they identify areas of practice to be improved, they work with drive and determination to support staff to make these improvements. For example, the deputy manager has supported staff to improve mealtimes, so that children develop positive attitudes towards trying new foods and enjoying social eating.
• Leaders create a happy and positive working environment. They offer staff opportunities to develop their skills, through training and professional development. However, they do not currently monitor staff practice closely enough to quickly identify any small inconsistencies in the quality of staff's interactions with children. This impacts on leaders' ability to offer personalised guidance to staff to fill any specific gaps in their skills or knowledge.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• improve arrangements for large-group activities so they best meet the needs of the children taking part
• monitor staff practice more closely so that any inconsistencies can be swiftly and supportively addressed to build further on existing good practice.