The Meadows Day Care Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happy and separate from parents with ease. Staff welcome children into their rooms and guide them to a variety of stimulating activities. Children settle at activities quickly. Staff carefully plan experiences based on children's interests and recent experiences. This helps to support children's engagement. For example, younger children enjoy exploring dough, that staff enhance with cake cases and various craft items. Children chat freely with staff about their recent birthdays as they recreate cakes for each other. Older children join sensory activities with enthusiasm and excitement. They combine materials and use tools skilfully. Children confidently demonstrate their creations and explain with detail to visitors how they work.

Children demonstrate strong attachments to staff by approaching them to ask for support or to just be beside a familiar adult. Staff respond quickly to children's needs, providing support or reassurance. As a result, children feel safe and are confident to explore the setting. Daily access to the secure outside space is enjoyed by all children. They play with sand, soil and construct with planks to create a balancing obstacle course. Overall, children's behaviour is good. Staff support children with their emotional vocabulary and incorporate strategies to develop their understanding of turn taking. Children respond well to praise consistently provided by staff for sharing and showing kindness to each other.

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

• Staff interact with children as they play. They introduce children to a wide range of vocabulary. For instance, staff chat with children as they explore collage materials. They repeat words such as 'soft', 'spiky' and 'shiny'. They have created a social environment where children are confident to share their thoughts and ideas. Staff ask purposeful questions that allow children to explain their understanding. They repeat sentences back to support children to hear the correct pronunciation of words.
• Children enjoy listening to well-read stories. They listen intently and enthusiastically join in. Staff ask questions about the illustrations and events in the story to support children's engagement. This provides children with good opportunity to hear lots of words, which helps to support their future success as they move forward in their learning.
• Staff understand the importance of early intervention and help for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. They seek advice from other professionals and ensure strategies are in place to promote children's learning. Staff work well with families to ensure that all children get support in order for them to make good progress.
• Children enjoy learning about mathematics. Staff use mathematical language during activities, such as talking about quantity and volume while playing in water. Younger children talk about how many candles are in a cake and enjoy singing counting rhymes.
• Mealtimes are planned to support children's independence. For instance, children self-serve from a choice of snack items, and manage to scoop, pour and spread. They collect their lunches and choose where to sit. This provides good opportunity for children to chat with their peers. However, at times, the environment can seem hectic and noisy. Not all children receive quality adult interaction and quickly lose interest in their lunch and leave the tables. Although staff set an activity for them to access, children are not engaged in any meaningful learning for some time while other children finish their lunch. This has an impact on their behaviour and disrupts the lunchtime period.
• Parent partnerships are strong. Parents describe staff as friendly and caring. They are kept well informed of their children's progress. Parents say they feel supported and staff keep them informed with regular updates, daily feedback and a parent newsletter.
• The manager values her staff team. She holds weekly meetings with senior staff members to reflect on practice and discuss the provision. Staff work well together, and state they feel supported by the management team. They have regular opportunity to access training and extend their professional development. However, the manager has not sought further ways to help all staff develop a deeper knowledge of teaching and learning.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation of mealtimes so that children are calmer and engaged in learning during these times
• build on the already good practice and seek further ways to help all staff develop first-rate teaching skills.