Tipton Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily at this safe and welcoming nursery. They receive a cheerful greeting from staff as they leave their parents, which helps them to settle in quickly. Children enter their playroom confidently and are ready to start their day. Children show that they feel secure in the nursery, as they form relationships with staff with ease and friendships with their peers and at an early age. Children are excited to see their friends, who they seek out to play with.

Children are provided with a wide range of activities and experiences, which they are keen to get involved with. Younger children develop their physical skills as they climb on soft-play equipment. They experiment with sand and water by moving it through containers, and explore the different textures with their hands. Staff model single words to them and children repeat these, which is helping to build their vocabulary. Older children identify features of different animals. They know what a crocodile is, and staff support their early mathematical skills by encouraging them to predict and count how many teeth the crocodile may have. Staff further extend children's learning by providing opportunities to practise their early writing skills, as they have a go at drawing and tracing the animals they play with.

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

• Children behave very well in the nursery. Staff act as exceptional role models to children. Their polite and respectful behaviours are mirrored by children. As a result, children understand the expectations of how to behave. They treat others and their environment with care and respect.
• Children's health and well-being is well supported by managers and staff. They have recently introduced a scheme for teeth cleaning, which promotes children's oral health. Children benefit from continuous access to the outdoor play area, where they benefit from fresh air and exercise. Staff are alert to children's safety and encourage them to wear sun hats when playing outdoors in warmer temperatures.
• Staff get to know all children very well. Key persons regularly assess children's development and identify individual targets for each child. Staff use this information to plan meaningful experiences that support children to make progress in their learning. However, at times, children are based in playrooms with a broad age group of children. During these times, some activities provided are not always challenging enough for the most able children to inform their own learning and help them make the best possible progress.
• Staff are kind and attentive to children's personal needs. They are respectful when changing children's nappies and afford their privacy. Staff are quick to respond to children who become dirty and help them to change their clothes or clean their faces.
• Children's communication and language development is given high priority by staff and managers. Staff engage in meaningful and age-appropriate interactions with children. Children delight as they sit down together to sing songs of their choosing or to share a book with a member of staff. The nursery has recently implemented a new communication and language programme to enhance this and engage parents in children's learning at home. Consequently, children become fluent talkers from an early age.
• Parents speak positively about the nursery. They are complimentary about the staff and the care that their child receives. Parents say that their children have made noticeable progress in their learning since attending the nursery.
• Older children develop high levels of independence in readiness for their eventual move to school. They serve their own lunches and manage their own health and hygiene. However, for younger children, staff do not always allow children the same opportunities. For example, they wait for staff to give them their water bottles and have their hands cleaned in other ways before eating. This means that they do not gain self-help skills as early as possible in preparation for the next stage of their learning.
• Leaders and managers are supportive of staff. Frequent individual meetings are held with staff to discuss their well-being, performance and training needs. Staff comment that they feel well supported in their roles. They have access to a varied range of training programmes to continually develop their knowledge and skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• enhance opportunities for younger children to develop their self-help skills in readiness for the next stage in their learning
• make better use of planning, so that more able children are consistently challenged in their learning, particularly when they are grouped in broader age ranges.