The Wishing Tree Day Nursery and Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children enjoy their time at the setting. They develop secure relationships with staff, who are passionate about children's learning and care about their feelings and views. For instance, staff ask children permission before engaging in intimate care routines. They give children a choice as to whom they want to carry out their care, providing children with a voice and respecting their wishes. This creates a considerate environment where children feel safe and secure.

Staff support children's emerging communication skills well. For instance, they provide children with tools to help them communicate while their language is at an early stage of development. This includes introducing basic sign language. Children, including babies, learn to sign simple requests, such as 'more'. Staff narrate children's play, enabling them to hear key words repeatedly and helping to extend their vocabulary. Children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and children who speak English as an additional language, become effective communicators.

Children behave well and develop good attitudes towards their learning. For example, a small group of children work together to complete a challenging jigsaw puzzle. Staff sit with children and allow them to use their knowledge of shape before offering further support and encouragement, such as matching colours and patterns. Although tricky, staff encourage children to persevere, helping them develop resilience.

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

• The manager creates a curriculum that is engaging, ambitious and well sequenced. Staff create next steps in learning that build successfully on what children already know. This enables all children to make steady progress from their starting points. Staff have regular opportunities to build on their own skills, through effective and supportive supervision. This develops staff's knowledge and promotes the continuous improvement of the setting. Staff receive good levels of support from senior staff, which helps them feel valued.
• Children develop an early understanding of literacy through their love of stories. For example, babies enjoy snuggling up with staff to read interactive books. They touch the textured pages and repeat the word 'fluffy', as they stroke the ears of the lamb on the page. Staff encourage older children to use the pictures to predict what will happen next, before reading the next part of the story. This helps children think critically and gain an understanding that text has meaning.
• Staff engage children in regular discussion to develop their understanding of equality and diversity. For example, during story time, staff encourage children to explore their similarities and differences. Children identify that some of them were born in Brighton, whereas others were born in another county or country. These discussions encourage children to explore their views in a respectful and safe environment. This helps children develop acceptance, as well as a secure sense of self.
• Children have lots of opportunities to develop their physical skills. For example, children improve their balance and strengthen core muscles as they stretch their bodies into yoga poses. Children practise their fine motor skills as they explore new materials and tools. For example, they squeeze, pound and manipulate clay and use pipettes to distribute water. This helps children develop the skills they will need for future writing.
• Children benefit from a consistent routine. Staff break the day into small chunks, helping children gain an understanding of 'now' and 'next'. This helps them to feel secure. However, on occasion, some children, including babies wait unnecessarily before they can eat their food. This is due to the strategies staff use to wash babies' hands. This can cause some babies to become restless and upset.
• Staff create regular opportunities to develop children's independence skills, helping to prepare them for their next stage in learning. For example, babies learn to respond to their own care needs as staff support them to wipe their own noses with the aid of mirrors. Older children enjoy additional responsibility as they set up areas for mealtimes, gathering plates and cutlery from the kitchen and laying the table.
• Staff work in partnership with parents and professionals, creating a consistent approach that supports children's learning. Parents receive regular updates, including children's progress and changes in staff, policies and routines. Parents report that their children are happy and make good progress during their time at the setting.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen mealtime routines, so that babies do not need to wait unnecessarily.