The Beeches Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and form strong relationships with adults and other children at this nursery. Caring, sensitive staff nurture children as they play alongside them. Babies seek cuddles and reassurance from their key person. Toddlers investigate the water-play activity with confidence. They giggle as they splash and pat the water in the large tray. Older children play alongside their friends. They work together to build a tall tower of large bricks. They take it in turns to pass coloured buttons to each other and thread them onto laces.

Children's early language and literacy development is encouraged. Babies develop a love of books as they snuggle up with staff to look at a favourite picture book. Toddlers join in with favourite nursery rhymes and listen to favourite stories. Older children recognise familiar letters on a poster. They say: 'Sssss is for snake' and practise drawing the shape of the letter 's' at the mark-making table.

Children explore, investigate and are active learners. They immerse themselves in the wide range of skilfully planned play activities on offer to them, both indoors and outdoors. Children develop their imagination and understanding of the world. They busy themselves using the mud kitchen area to make potions. They mix together leaves, mud and water into little pots and gleefully share them out to their friends. Younger children practise their pouring skills and develop mathematical ideas in water play. They fill jugs to the rim with scented water and laugh as they pour it all out again.

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

• Dedicated managers are clearly passionate about their curriculum for children. They work hard to ensure that this is reflected in their provision. As a result, there is a strong ethos that supports children to learn through play.
• Parents are very happy with the care and education provided at this nursery. They speak highly of the caring staff team. They say their children are happy and are making good progress. They appreciate the regular updates about their child's ongoing development. They comment that communication between staff and themselves is valuable.
• Staff promote diversity and inclusion well. They embed children's traditions, backgrounds and festivals into daily activities. For example, children who celebrate the festival Eid share their traditions with other children. They do this as they listen to music, taste different foods and retell stories while playing with small-world animals.
• Leaders and staff are very alert to the needs of all children. They know them well and build close relationships with them. They use their knowledge of child development and how children learn well. This helps them to decide what children need to do next. As a result, adults plan play opportunities that focus on specific learning intentions. This helps children make good progress.
• Children have some opportunities to be independent. For example, older children wash their cups and dishes after snack. However, most of the time staff, offer too much support. They do not provide enough opportunity for children to build on their independence over time.
• The special educational needs coordinator, who is also the manager, works closely with staff and parents to provide additional support for children who may need extra help. Additional funding is used for targeted intervention and specific resources to help children's progress. The manager works alongside other professionals to ensure that children make good progress in their development. Focused action plans highlight achievable targets for progress.
• Leaders understand their role in safeguarding. They liaise closely with other professionals to ensure prompt action is taken where concerns are raised. For example, when allegations are made against staff, they seek advice quickly and in a professional manner. Leaders fully understand their responsibility to notify Ofsted of concerns raised that question managers' or staff's suitability. Recently, they followed their procedures and made attempts to keep Ofsted informed but failed to complete this in a timely way. However, this has now been rectified and, therefore, there is no impact on children.
• Leaders have a clear focus and know what they need to do to improve. They support staff's professional development so that they can develop their teaching skills. Managers and experienced staff model best practice and quality interactions for those staff who are less experienced. However, the quality of teaching is not yet consistent across the staff team to ensure that the less-experienced staff fully understand how to provide more challenge for children and extend their learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to provide more opportunities for children to build on their independence and to do more things for themselves
• support less-experienced staff to fully understand how to extend learning and challenge children as they play.