Toddler Town Nursery Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children's love of learning and their interests are at the heart of every decision the manager and staff make. Children form close attachments to staff, who nurture them and help them to gain confidence in their own abilities. Children feel safe, secure and emotionally ready to learn as they independently access resources and interact with staff. Children respond well to guidance from staff to be kind and take turns and, overall, children behave well.

Staff provide children with an exciting range of learning experiences that motivate them to play and learn. For example, children develop good communication and social skills as they confidently engage with each other and the staff who care for them. Children develop their physical skills as they learn to sit, roll, walk and crawl, and they gain independence with gentle praise and encouragement. Outside, children laugh, chatter and, overall, play well together as they walk and balance along milk crates with great control as they develop their physical skills. Children develop good attitudes to learning and develop many skills to support them to move on to the next stage in their education.

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

• The manager leads the staff team very well, and she is passionate about her role and promotes inclusion for all children at the highest level. She offers a range of coaching and supervision opportunities that help staff to plan an ambitious, carefully sequenced curriculum that they fully understand in order to enrich learning across all areas of the early years curriculum.
• Gaps in children's learning and development are quickly identified and swiftly addressed through ongoing observations, discussions and assessment. Staff work closely with a range of outside agencies and provide carefully targeted support for children highly effectively. As a result, all children make good progress from their starting points.
• Additional funding for supporting children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is used highly effectively to enrich children's experiences. For example, staff have undertaken advanced training in supporting children with SEND. This helps to ensure that the unique needs of all children are met.
• Staff speak calmly and gently to children and, on the whole, implement highly effective behaviour management strategies. Children are kind and caring and, for the most part, play harmoniously together. However, some children struggle to develop these skills and are not consistently supported to help them recognise and manage their feelings. On occasion, this impacts on the experiences and learning of other children.
• Children develop good literacy skills. They enjoy trips to the library and take books home to share with their families to support children's love for books from a young age. Staff are engaging storytellers as they support children in their early reading skills. Children confidently share what they know and understand. For example, babies make animal noises when they see a cat as they lift the flaps in a book. Older children describe how a spider can climb up a web using its 'hairy, spiky legs'. Others talk about their feelings, such as feeling 'scared'.
• Children enjoy making dough and develop their knowledge of cause and effect as they mix ingredients together and explore change. They smell and add dried orange peel and tell staff the mixture is an orange cake as they use their imagination and recall their previous knowledge and experiences.
• Children's good health is promoted well. Staff offer respectful support and encouragement in an unhurried manner. This helps to build children's resilience. Staff provide children with healthy snacks and encourage children to try new tastes and textures. For example, children try Italian foods and learn new words, such as 'salami'. They learn about similarities and differences as they listen to familiar nursery rhymes and model the actions as they are sung in Italian. Opportunities such as these successfully support children to learn about the world around them.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents are encouraged to contribute to their child's learning and value all the opportunities they get to share in nursery life. The views of all parents can be best summarised by parents who remark that 'Toddler Town is a fantastic nursery.'

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• encourage staff to give clear and consistent messages to all children when supporting them to regulate their behaviour to enhance and strengthen children's understanding of right and wrong.