Sunshine Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy in this nurturing environment. The settling-in process is effective and allows staff to quickly form strong bonds with children and their families. This ensures children feel safe and secure. Staff spend time observing children to find out what they know and plan activities around their next steps. Parents feel comforted, supported and reassured by the staff, demonstrating that ongoing communication is good. Parents of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) feel particularly supported with the area of speech and language development.

Children behave well and show respect for one another. For example, children enjoy sitting for circle time. They sign and sing 'hello' to their friends and learn key signs to help communicate with each other. Staff ensure children understand there are many ways to communicate, which helps them to feel emotionally secure and understand each other's unique differences.

Children enjoy all the activities that are on offer and are comfortable to select toys around their interests. There is a large garden where there are many opportunities for children to develop physically. For example, they ride bicycles over grassy mounds, slide down slides, swing on swings and have lots of space to run and play games.

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

• The designated reading area has a range of different books, and children are motivated to read. Staff share stories with children, and children self-select books. Children enjoy turning pages and lifting the flaps. Staff use effective questioning techniques to encourage children to join in with repeated phrases. This promotes a love for reading.
• Children have many opportunities to learn about healthy lifestyles. They grow their own fruits and vegetables in their vegetable patch and share a range of healthy fruits and vegetables during mealtimes. Children understand the importance of making healthy choices around food.
• There are plenty of activities for children to develop their small-muscle skills. They use tools to manipulate play dough, copy words to write cards and paint with cars. These activities support their next steps in writing.
• Children are encouraged to be independent. They dress themselves for outdoor play, serve themselves milk from a small jug and use spoons to help themselves at snack times. They self-select toys they would like to play with and tidy toys away when they are asked to.
• Staff plan activities to ensure children have a concrete understanding of number. Children enjoy finding different amounts of coloured objects around the nursery to match the numbers one to five. Staff reinforce how numbers are sequenced and provide children with strategies to develop their accuracy in counting.
• Effective strategies for supporting children who speak English as an additional language are in place, and these children make good progress. However, more can be done to fully embed their understanding of new vocabulary during planned activities and to support their free-choice play.
• Children behave well and show positive attitudes in approaching the different activities that are on offer. For example, children enjoy playing with the animal props for the story 'Dear Zoo'. They learn the animals' names and their characteristics. However, some staff need further support to ensure that these planned activities are carefully structured. This is so children remain focused for longer periods of time and learn what the staff intend them to.
• The manager is hands-on and works directly with children and parents daily. The special educational needs coordinator uses her knowledge to support children well. She helps staff to create targeted intervention plans to support children with SEND. In addition, she communicates with parents to provide updates. The nursery makes use of external agencies to further support children with specific learning needs. Staff enjoy working at this nursery as they are part of a fully supportive team.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on existing strategies to further develop the introduction of new vocabulary for children who speak English as an additional language
• support staff further in planning and delivering activities that engage children for longer periods of time to allow children to fully embed the intended learning.