Tom Thumb Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children settle quickly on arrival and show curiosity to explore a broad range of activities set up for them to engage with. Staff have good relationships with children, providing warm and positive support. They regularly praise children when they practise new skills.

Leaders and staff have a clear understanding of what children need to learn. They prioritise work around children's personal, social and emotional development and communication and language skills. This is because leaders and staff have noticed a lasting impact from the COVID-19 pandemic that directly affects children's development. As such, staff use this information to plan appropriate activities and experiences to counteract the impact and support children's learning and development well. For example, one staff member is assigned to specifically focus on children's emotional health and well-being. Small-group activities are set up for children to support them to explore their feelings. This helps children recognise how to cope with big emotions and contributes towards supporting their self-regulation skills.

Children and babies have plentiful opportunities to develop their communication and language skills. Staff encourage pre-school children to participate in group times and stories. Children confidently contribute what they can recall from much loved books, showing good levels of language. Furthermore, staff sing with gusto to babies and very young children, who delight in joining in with action songs.

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

• Leaders utilise a variety of strategies to self-evaluate the quality of the provision. For example, they conduct supervisions to identify training needs to support ongoing professional development. There are subsequent room checks to see the impact training has on staff practice. This contributes towards driving ongoing improvements to ensure children receive good-quality care and education.
• On the whole, staff demonstrate good teaching practice. They explain ideas to help children grasp new ideas and model skills to encourage them to practise how to do things for themselves. However, there are some minor inconsistencies where junior staff are not clear about the early years foundation stage (EYFS), yet are the named key person. This means they are unsure how children's individual learning needs can be met through planning and implementing effective educational programmes. Nevertheless, senior staff do have oversight of junior staff and ensure children are exposed to a broad and balanced curriculum.
• All children have a key person to meet their individual needs. A buddy system is in place to provide continuity of care and education. However, less experienced staff who are still learning aspects of the role are given the responsbility of being a key person. At times, they are unsure how to fulfil this role. Despite this, they are supported by room leaders and senior staff who are available to offer support and guidance.
• Staff provide a good range of activities to promote children's physical development. For instance, staff model how to thread dry pasta quills onto pipe cleaners to make necklaces. Children demonstrate good levels of persistence and concentration when practising new skills. Staff recognise that providing a variety of opportunities to support children's fine manipulative skills will contribute towards muscle control for later handwriting.
• At times, children struggle with their behaviour and need support from staff to help overcome minor upsets between peers. Despite this, staff demonstrate a consistent approach in offering sensitive support to remind children about the rules of the setting. In addition, staff provide explanations about why rules are in place to keep children safe. This helps children understand how behaviour impacts themselves and others.
• The special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) monitors all children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The SENCo ensures swift intervention is in place, with setting support plans that outline targets and strategies. Key persons implement these plans to help children catch up.
• Parents comment positively about the care offered to their children. Leaders have good parent partnership to provide parents with updates on children's progress. Furthermore, the setting offers a lending library scheme to support children's learning at home and share details with parents about e-safety. This provides information on how to keep children safe when accessing the internet. However, staff have yet to fully embed teaching children about safe screen time.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the support for junior staff so they have a robust understanding of the EYFS
• develop the key-person approach to ensure communication between senior and junior staff is consistent to meet children's individual needs
• extend work on e-safety to support children to learn about how to stay safe online and safe screen time.