Twyford Tots Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are personally greeted by their key person as they enter this warm and nurturing setting. This helps them to feel safe and loved. Children settle well into nursery and make positive attachments to their key person. Staff consider personal, social and emotional development to be a priority for children. For example, they provide children with effective transition sessions when they start at the nursery and as they move between rooms. Children behave well due to the supportive staff who take time to teach children about feelings. If children behave in an unkind way to others, this is quickly dealt with by staff. They teach children to consider the feelings of their friends, and staff use distraction to divert children's behaviour.

Staff have high expectations for children, particularly when it comes to developing independence. Children, including babies, are taught how to feed themselves. They learn how to pour their own drinks and, as they get older, they attend to their own toileting needs. Children are happy and confident. They make choices about where they would like to play. Children explore light and dark in the sensory room, shining torches on the walls and ceiling. Children are excited as staff show them how to make shadow puppets.

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

• The nursery staff have created a purposeful curriculum that focuses on using weekly stories as a basis for children's learning. Children get to know the story well through repetition, enabling them to read along with the narrative. They make and use dough with staff, creating characters from the story. Children develop their fine motor skills while they squeeze and roll the dough into worms. They continue their interest in the characters when they search for worms and other creatures while exploring outside.
• Staff use effective assessment procedures that include information from parents to plan for children's next steps. They use this information to provide children with new experiences that extend their understanding of the world around them. Staff take children on weekly visits to outdoor learning spaces, where they explore trees and plants. When learning about recycling, children go for walks with staff and collect litter.
• Children develop good listening and attention skills because staff regularly spend time engaging them in songs and rhymes. Babies sit and take part in circle time activities with staff. They concentrate for extended periods, taking part in singing and actions. However, staff do not always make best use of opportunities to extend children's knowledge of number and counting skills.
• Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) very well, and they make good progress. The special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) devotes her time to assessing and engaging children in targeted activities in the dedicated special education needs hub. Children enjoy taking part in activities that are differentiated to their level of development. They explore letters and sounds and match them using puzzles.
• Parents speak highly of the nursery and the staff that care for their children. Staff support them with toilet training ideas and work with parents to provide children with continuity. Parents receive regular feedback from staff about their children's development. Staff share children's achievements and next steps, allowing parents to support their development at home.
• The nursery manager and staff work closely with other agencies. They liaise with staff at other settings that they share children with, so that they can provide children with stability. The local authority staff offer ongoing practical support around the development of practice, providing ideas about how staff can extend children's experiences. The manager makes sure that there are communication-friendly areas in every room. Children fully engage in this and spend time communicating with friends or spend time alone exploring resources in a quiet space. This supports children's emotional well-being.
• Staff feel valued by the manager who supports their well-being. Some staff are eager to access additional training to further their understanding of child development. However, quality supervision is not yet fully embedded. This means that staff do not have regular opportunities to discuss their development needs, which prevents them from improving their teaching skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen teaching to help accelerate children's outcomes even further, specifically children's mathematical development
• strengthen supervision systems so that staff receive focused and highly effective feedback, providing them with specific targets for improvement to help improve teaching further.