The Little Den Day Nursery - Chesterton

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy in this warm and homely setting. Staff create a nurturing and welcoming environment that helps children feel emotionally secure. There is a strong key-person system and children form good attachments to staff, enabling them to separate from their parents and carers confidently to play and learn with their friends. Staff use children's interests and their next stages in learning to plan a range of activities that support all children to make good progress from their starting points. For example, babies post items into containers, developing their small-motor skills and hand-eye coordination as they do so. Toddlers build on their physical strength as they join in action songs. Pre-school children play cooperatively as they use their imagination to negotiate and communicate with each other in the role-play area. Staff use the local community to extend children's experiences and learning environments. For example, they take the children to the local park for a nature walk and to feed the ducks, or to the shops to discuss what shops sell and to look and learn about the world around them.

Staff use lots of praise to reinforce good behaviours, such as good tidying, and say 'Well done for washing your hands.' Staff distract children from unwanted behaviours with a range of strategies, and children are learning to manage their emotions well.

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

• Leaders and managers are very passionate about the care they give children. The strong ethos is to ensure that children have exciting opportunities that enable them to flourish, aim high and become confident learners. Staff feel that management supports them well. They have regular supervision meetings where the managers set both room and personal targets to improve outcomes for the children. The open-door policy supports staff both personally and professionally. Staff access professional development opportunities, both mandatory and further training, to improve their teaching to higher levels.
• Staff support children's communication and language development well. They create a language-rich environment for all children to hear a range of words and sounds. They model good language and teach children new words. For example, staff discuss how the apples are 'crunchy' and older babies repeat the words. Pre-school staff introduce words such as 'stomp' as the children pretend to be dinosaurs. Staff encourage older children to recall events and ask them open-ended questions, giving them time to think and respond.
• Children start to develop a love of books. Babies sit independently turning the pages in books and pointing to pictures. Staff talk to them about what they see as babies excitedly lift the flaps to see which animal is underneath. Staff further support children's love of books with a library for them to take books home to enjoy, which builds on children's early literacy skills.
• Overall, staff support children's learning well and all children make good progress. Babies explore confidently, showing wonder as they investigate a range of sensory materials. Toddlers develop pre-writing skills as they mark-make in sand or manipulate dough. Pre-school children develop their large muscles as they run and jump outdoors. However, occasionally, during group activities, staff do not always take account of the different ways in which children learn. The activity goes on for too long for some children, which causes them to lose their focus and attention.
• Children start to learn the rules and routines and begin to understand what staff expect of them. For example, they tidy up their toys or wait in line to come in from outdoors. However, during snack routines, babies wait too long in their seats before they are served with snacks, and they become fidgety and restless. At lunchtime, pre-school children wait in turn to self-serve their meal. This results in some children waiting for long periods, which impacts on the children's behaviour.
• Partnerships with parents are a strength of the setting. Parents are keen to say how staff support them and their families above and beyond their expectations. Parents get daily communication, both using an online system and verbally when they collect children. The setting provides parents with home-learning ideas to support children's progress. Managers are committed to supporting families, and plans are in place to further enhance the impact of home-learning opportunities.
• Staff promote children's health and well-being. Children go outdoors every day to benefit from fresh air and physical exercise. They have healthy snacks and access to fresh water. Children can bring a packed lunch from home or have a hot, cooked meal at the setting. Staff talk to the children about staying healthy with topics such as toothbrushing and good oral hygiene.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to tailor activities more precisely to help support each child's learning, maintain their focus and keep them fully engaged
• review and improve the organisation of snack and lunchtime routines to minimise children's waiting times.