Tops Prince Rock

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily and confidently. They enter the nursery waving a cheerful goodbye to their parents. Children are keen to greet their friends and staff and to explore the resources and activities on offer, demonstrating a positive attitude to learning. Staff plan and deliver an enjoyable curriculum that builds on children's interests. While babies practise tummy time to develop their core muscles, staff encourage them to look around and to reach for toys. Staff motivate toddlers to blow and pop bubbles and support the pre-school children to use mathematical language when measuring toys. Children make good progress, which helps to prepare them for later learning, including school.

Staff form warm and affectionate relationships with children and tailor the settling-in process to suit each child's needs, working closely with parents. Staff remind children to share and take turns and they give children lots of praise, which helps to build the children's self-confidence. Children are kind and play well together. For example, toddlers offer the bubble wands to their friends and invite them to have a go. Pre-school children request a turn with the toys when their friends have finished playing with them and wait patiently until the toys become available.

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

• Since the last inspection, the provider has worked hard to implement changes. For example, they have organised training for the staff to improve their interactions with children and the support for children's communication and language development. Staff model language effectively, teach children new words and vary the volume and tone of their speech to capture children's attention. For example, staff read parts of a story in a whisper, and the pre-school children listen with curiosity and rapt attention.
• The provider has supported staff to review the curriculum, including the planning and organisation of small group activities. This has had a positive impact on staff's relationships with their key children and on supporting children's listening and speaking skills. During some small group activities, staff do not challenge the older and more able children as effectively as they could, to extend the pre-school children's learning further.
• Staff know the children well and work closely with parents to identify and meet children's individual needs. They are quick to recognise when children might benefit from additional support and take action to involve relevant agencies.
• Parents provide positive feedback about the nursery, including the warm relationships that their children form with staff and the support that the whole family receives. Staff share ongoing information with parents to promote consistency in children's care and learning. For example, they keep parents informed about the vocabulary they are teaching children, so parents can help to build on children's language development at home.
• Staff organise themselves well to keep children safe. However, for short periods of time in the baby and toddler rooms, staff do not deploy themselves effectively to meet children's learning needs consistently. For example, they change children's nappies and warm children's bottles at the same time, leaving fewer staff present to support and interact with the children.
• Children learn a range of skills while they play, explore and take part in activities. Babies hold the hands of staff when they try to balance across stepping stones, and they bounce up and down while waving their arms as they dance to music. Pre-school children use tools to mould and cut play dough and tell staff imaginatively that they have made a strawberry pizza.
• Children learn to be independent from a young age. Toddlers are very confident in their abilities and inform staff that they want to slice the fruit for snack themselves. Pre-school children blow their own noses, use cutlery ably at mealtimes and pour their own drinks.
• The provider and staff understand and implement risk assessment effectively, to ensure the premises are safe and secure for children. They teach children to think about how to keep themselves safe. Children only climb on the climbing frame as high as they feel able to manage, and they do this with care.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review and develop the deployment of staff in the baby and toddler rooms at busier times in the day to provide more consistent and targeted support for children's learning needs
• support staff to engage and challenge the older and more able pre-school children during group activities to extend their learning further.