Tiger Lillies Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive into a warm and welcoming environment where staff help them to settle quickly to activities. Children show they feel safe and secure. They form positive relationships with staff, who respond to their individual needs and give them lots of praise and encouragement. Staff get to know children well, overall. This helps them to assess and plan according to children's interests and what they need to learn next. Children are confident and show increasing independence as they choose what to play. They settle happily to play together with their chosen toys. Children respond to staff's positive approach. They are keen learners and are gaining high levels of self-esteem. Children are creative and imaginative. They enjoy talking to the puppet in the home area about healthy foods.

Children's behaviour is good and they play with each other cooperatively. They understand the rules of the setting and encourage each other to tidy away activities. Children form friendships and support new children to understand what is happening next while they settle in. Children eagerly try new things. They practise their physical skills and coordination. For example, they enjoy practising using pedals to ride the bikes and using a hole punch during a creative activity.

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

• Overall, the manager and staff team have ambitious expectations for all children. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are supported well. Staff use information they obtain from parents from the outset to plan for what the children need to learn next. Staff analyse what children already know and identify what they need to learn next. This helps children to make good progress from their starting points.
• Staff know children well and talk about what they know and can do. They use effective systems for planning and assessment to identify children's next steps and address any possible gaps in learning. However, when children's key person changes there is no consistent information-sharing about children to provide continuity in their learning.
• Children, including those who speak English as an additional language, have many opportunities to develop their communication and language skills. Staff enable children to hear and repeat words, such as 'cocoon', in the context of a story being read to them. Children enjoy stories, songs and rhymes, and staff model language well.
• Children are taught the skills they need for the next stage of their learning. Staff help children to leave the setting confident, independent, resilient and inquisitive individuals. Children are curious and motivated as they make recipes in the mud kitchen for each other. They talk about the different-shaped structures they make in the sand.
• Overall, partnerships with parents are effective. Parents are happy with the care their children receive at the nursery. They say that they like the 'kind and caring staff' and feel supported. Parents enjoy listening to songs that the children have been learning at nursery and comment on how their children's communication is improving. However, some parents are unfamiliar with resources, such as the app, where they can find out more about what their children have been learning, to enable them to further support their children's learning at home.
• The manager monitors the quality of education and care that staff provide for children. She routinely observes staff teaching and provides them with helpful feedback to support their future performance. Staff evaluate their own practice as well as a team. For instance, at the end of each session they discuss the activities they feel have been a success and what they can adapt and extend next time they complete them.
• Staff make good use of regular training. For example, they have recently completed training in behaviour management. This has helped staff to be more consistent in praising good behaviour and they have introduced strategies to support children's positive behaviour. Children are beginning to manage their feelings and control their emotions.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• improve information-sharing between staff to provide greater continuity in children's learning
• share even more information with parents so they can help and support their children's learning at home.