The Cheshire Day Nursery @ Guardian Street

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children's unmistakeable sense of security enables them to take the ups and downs of a busy nursery day in their stride. Children feel safe because staff present routines and activities in a consistent and positive way. They make excellent progress because staff know that every detail of the environment and their teaching is important. This is particularly evident in the continuity between rooms. For example, children of all ages know that there is always a table with play dough on it. The familiar activity helps children to settle into a new room. Furthermore, staff expertly use the dough to help children to build skills and knowledge as they grow. The youngest children discover its texture and develop hand and finger strength. In the pre-school, staff skilfully use the dough to promote children's imaginative play and to deepen children's understanding of concepts, such as relative size.

Parents and carers comment that 'every element of play or activity has meaning behind it'. This indicates that staff take time to explain the curriculum to parents. As a result, parents know what to do to reinforce and extend children's learning at home. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the team focused even more closely on helping children to develop positive relationships. Children make rapid progress in learning to follow rules and routines. They gain understanding of how their words, mood and behaviour affect other people.

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

• Leaders are ambitious for everyone's achievement. Managers attend accredited training that helps them to gain further insight into aspects of the curriculum. For example, managers study ideas from academic research about how changing the seating arrangements at group times enhances children's learning and involvement. They ably apply and share their learning. This helps everyone in the team to continuously grow their professional skills and knowledge.
• Arrangements for supervising and supporting staff are comprehensive and well managed. Staff know that they and their ideas are valued. This helps them to feel happy and positive in their roles. The nursery is a caring, harmonious workplace. This immerses children in an atmosphere of mutual respect and tolerance that they learn to emulate. Staff say that the team 'feels like a big family'. They want to carry on working for the company.
• The nursery's curriculum demonstrates leaders' excellent understanding of how to sequence children's learning. One intention is that children learn to cut with scissors. Staff help younger children to develop small-muscle strength and control. For example, two-year-old children excitedly use little tools to chip baby dinosaurs out of toy eggs. This groundwork prepares children to quickly succeed in learning to use scissors when they are older.
• The curriculum is rooted in the team's advanced knowledge of how children learn. Furthermore, the highly effective in-house training means that staff are confident teachers. Room teams identify a 'skill of the week'. In one room this is 'compare size and weights using gestures and language'. Staff seamlessly incorporate the concepts of comparative size and weight into routines, conversations and activities.
• Books are at the heart of the curriculum. Babies focus on four core texts. Then more are added in each room. Discussion of the familiar stories becomes increasingly sophisticated as children grow. Children consider why the characters act as they do. When recalling the events of a favourite story, pre-school children remind staff that 'we didn't go through the stumble trip thingy'. Children ably apply their knowledge of stories to their own storytelling.
• Children's vocabulary grows rapidly. Room teams identify new words to teach children, then create reasons to use them during planned and spontaneous activities. For example, children apply a newly introduced word, 'combine', when they mix ingredients together to make gingerbread men. In a further example, children match their baby dinosaur models to pictures. This motivates them to attempt multisyllabic words, such as 'triceratops'.
• Well-developed routines promote children's learning. Tweenies purposefully explore the inviting room. This frees staff in the room to focus on one-to-one teaching with children getting ready for outdoor play. Pre-school children demonstrate the impressive impact of their time in nursery. They communicate a sense of achievement as they self-serve their lunch. Children know that they must think about how much food they need to take. This helps to promote their physical well-being.