Tall Trees Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders have designed a curriculum to support all children to make good progress. This is shared with staff, who build on this to plan for children's daily experiences. For instance, staff organise an activity to help children to extend their literacy skills. Children demonstrate a good attitude to learning as they wait patiently and listen attentively while staff explain what they will be doing. Afterwards, children enjoy finding different letters in sawdust and proudly show staff the letters they have found. Staff encourage children to name the sounds and link them to familiar words. This helps children to recognise letters and sounds.

Staff are sensitive to the individual needs of children. They work in close partnership with parents. This provides staff with relevant information so they can ensure that children receive appropriate support. For example, staff understand why some children may be unsettled. They offer children warmth and kindness to help them feel secure and comforted. This supports children to develop strong bonds with staff.

Leaders implement effective strategies for children to learn about themselves and others. For instance, they ask families to bring back souvenirs from their holidays. Leaders use these to create educational boxes to support children to learn about different countries, cultures and traditions. This helps children to develop their understanding of the world around them.

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

• Leaders provide effective support to help staff understand their roles and responsibilities. This includes having regular meetings with staff and observing their practice. Leaders identify what staff do well and provide them with ideas to strengthen their teaching further. This enables leaders to enhance the quality of experiences that children receive at nursery.
• Overall, staff provide children with effective support in their development and they engage well as children enjoy exploring their surroundings. Staff build on opportunities to successfully extend children's learning. For example, children show staff the toy animals they are playing with. Staff name the animals clearly for children to understand and encourage them to repeat the names back. This supports children to develop their language skills. However, some staff are less knowledgeable about how children learn. This does not fully enable them to identify how to appropriately support children in their learning, so that all children benefit from consistently high quality interactions.
• Staff successfully adapt activities to incorporate children's interests. For instance, when children talk about boats, staff modify the activity to make these instead of planes. Staff show children how to blow on their paper boats to make them go faster in the water tray. Children keenly join in and enjoy the process of watching their boats move around. This helps children to develop an understanding of cause and effect.
• Staff supervise children well. This enables them to respond quickly when children need their support. This includes helping children to regulate their behaviour, such as encouraging them to share the toys with their friends. Children respond positively, which promotes their understanding of how to interact with others. However, staff do not always extend this to support children to independently resolve conflicts. This does not fully enable children to practice managing difficulties for themselves.
• Leaders recognise the key skills that children need to develop before they start school. This includes supporting children to become independent in their daily tasks to enable them to do things for themselves. Children learn to serve their own food and pour their own drinks during mealtimes. Additionally, when staff identify that some children are struggling to use the cutlery, they spend time teaching children how to feed themselves. This helps children to learn how to meet their own needs.
• Staff support children to develop their creative skills. For instance, they allow children time to draw their own pictures. Staff ask them questions about their pictures, and children proudly explain what they have drawn, which helps them to build on their language skills. Additionally, staff encourage children to name and find different coloured pencils. They provide appropriate support to enable children to find the correct ones. This enables children to build on their knowledge of colours.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support less experienced staff to strengthen their knowledge of how children learn
• build on staff's understanding of how to consistently support children to resolve difficulties for themselves.