The Lawns Children's Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy and enjoy their time at the nursery. They confidently explore the welcoming and well-designed environment, making choices about their play and learning. Children form strong bonds with the friendly and approachable staff, who know them well. Children develop their skills across a balanced curriculum, which prepares them well for school. They gain good independence. They confidently place finished drawings in their bag, without assistance.

Children greatly enjoy the opportunities to be outside and physically active. They engage well in chasing games, carefully negotiating the space and avoiding collisions. Children play cooperatively, building obstacle courses together. They think about which pieces to use and test their ideas. They think about safe ways to cross the obstacle course, with some crawling and some jumping, and take turns. Children understand the effect that exercise has on their bodies. They comment that they need to remove their coats as they have become 'too hot'.

Children enjoy songs and stories that help them to build their vocabulary. For example, young children listen to a rhyming story, 'Rumble in the Jungle'. They predict who they might see next and make the corresponding animal sounds. For the most part, young children listen well.

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

• Staff design a curriculum that focuses on children's interests and what they need to learn next. Staff adapt the curriculum well to include all children and enable them to engage at their level of development. Staff promptly assess children's needs. They put relevant support plans in place when needed, and initiate professional conversations to secure additional funding. There are ongoing discussions with schools to enable a smooth transition so that children settle quickly.
• Staff engage in regular training and receive effective support and guidance from the management team. For example, there has been a strong focus on 'emotional coaching' in response to helping children self-regulate and make good choices. Consequently, children behave well. Staff work closely with parents and other professionals to devise relevant behavioural support plans to provide consistent approaches to managing behaviour.
• Overall, staff use daily routines well to help children settle and feel safe. For example, children engage well in the 'welcome' song and enjoy talking about how they feel before hanging their photograph on the 'emotion tree'. Those children who feel sad receive a cuddle and reassurance that their parent will return soon. However, staff do not always use known and tried strategies, such as visual reminders, consistently to help children understand what is happening now and next to enable them to understand expectations.
• Staff use small-group activities well to help children build their skills. For example, children continue to develop their small-muscle skills by using tweezers to pick up the dinosaurs to place in a matching coloured bowl. Children count their dinosaurs confidently. However, staff do not always challenge the older and most-able children to build on their competency in counting, for example, to introduce early calculation skills.
• There are good partnerships with parents to ensure that staff meet children's individual needs successfully. This is particularly evident in the support for children's special dietary requirements and medical needs. Staff gather a wealth of information from parents when children start at the setting to help them settle quickly. Staff share ongoing information regularly, such as during handovers, stay-and-play sessions and through the online information-sharing system.
• Staff are vigilant about safeguarding children and understand their roles and responsibilities. Staff record, report and share information, working closely with other agencies to enable children and their families to receive the support they need promptly.
• The provider has a good overview of the quality of children's experiences in the nursery. They regularly evaluate and track children's progress and gain feedback from staff and parents. This helps to influence the action plan to improve the quality even further, such as by developing children's knowledge of letters and sounds.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation of small-group times to ensure that children are challenged and remain focused on their learning
• develop staff consistency in applying the nursery's chosen strategies to develop children's understanding of routines and expectations for focused group times.