The Riverside Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show immense excitement when they spot their friends entering the nursery. They settle quickly into the appealing learning opportunities that the dedicated staff provide for them. Relationships between children and staff are strong and very positive. Children love to explore independently, with others and staff. They happily invite their peers into their play and exploration. Children enjoy affectionate hugs from staff, knowing that they care and respond attentively to their care needs. This shows that children feel emotionally safe and secure.

Staff create a varied curriculum that builds on children's natural curiosity and resilience. As part of their evaluations, the provider has highlighted a priority for improving the mathematics curriculum for children. Staff's training in this area has contributed to better outcomes for children. In practice, staff identify opportunities to teach early mathematical concepts, such as length and height. They use appropriate language, such as 'taller than' and 'shorter than', when comparing children's heights. Children begin to apply these words correctly in their own play.

Children's behaviour is very good. They are quick to follow the acceptable rules, such as walking inside. Staff offer generous praise, particularly when they follow the set boundaries. They skilfully provide targeted interventions for those who need additional support to improve their social and learning skills, such as turn taking and sustained concentration. This is proving highly successful as these children soon learn to boost their conduct positively.

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

• There is a clear focus on supporting children's competency in communication and language. Staff create a language-rich environment, where children's babble, talk and singing are greatly valued. They encourage children to acquire language through stories and during meaningful interactions with children. Staff introduce a range of new words and interesting vocabulary. The youngest children point to pictures in books and learn to name what they can see. Children remain captivated when staff use puppets to animate stories and songs that children love. Older children answer questions about the story events, including predicting what may happen at the end. This helps to develop children's understanding of the story characters and plot, as well as providing them with ideas to make up their own stories.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are progressing as well as other children. Staff swiftly identify gaps in children's learning through their secure assessment processes. Leaders have a clear overview of how well children with SEND are performing. They have extremely good working relationships with external professionals, such as speech and language therapists. Staff use the experts' advice to build individual plans to help address these children's needs with considerable success.
• The staff team have high expectations of what they want children to be able to do by the time they leave the setting. They prioritise children's development to feel confident to do things for themselves and provide them with several opportunities to have a go. For example, at mealtimes children pour their own drinks from a jug and feed themselves with cutlery appropriate to their age and stage of development. This gives them a true sense of responsibility and helps them learn important life-skills for the next stage in their education.
• Overall, daily routines of the day run smoothly across the setting and children know what to expect. However, there are minor inconsistencies in the way routines are structured from room to room. This is evident when children's play is sometimes interrupted without warning. This impacts on children's enjoyment, ability to become deeply engaged and follow a task through to the end.
• The provider strives to offer the highest quality of education and care. They demonstrate a strong commitment to drive continuous improvement. For example, staff are taking part in an early years specialist programme to enhance their knowledge and skills. Regular meetings as a team and individuals, enable staff to consider their professional development and progression. In general, teaching is good across the nursery. Leaders observe staff's practice and provide feedback on the areas requiring further development. However, leaders do not monitor the ongoing impact of all staff's practice robustly enough. This means that children's learning is not always fully maximised.
• Leaders and staff work remarkably well with parents. Their partnership effectively helps children settle quickly. Staff share children's ongoing progress with parents through an online application and detailed daily verbal feedback. They exchange ideas with parents to support children's continual learning at home. Parents appreciate the community feel, enhanced by organised family events, including the preschool children's graduation ceremony.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review and strengthen daily routines to ensure children continue to explore and expand their learning for longer periods of time without interruptions
• monitor individual staff's practice even more closely to enable all children to fully benefit from the highest quality of teaching.