Wendy House Birkenhead Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff are friendly and reassuring. They provide children with sensitive, individual support. This helps new children, and those returning from the long summer break, to feel secure. Children of all ages gather eagerly for story time. This is because they know that staff will make the event worthwhile and exciting. Children listen carefully to stories. They share ideas and answer questions. This promotes children's language development. Children remember the events in familiar tales and talk about what will happen next. They begin to understand how stories are structured. Children delight in joining in loudly with repeated words and phrases. This promotes their confidence well.

Parents and carers praise the approachable staff. They say that managers help them to complete administrative processes, such as enrolling their children at school. Parents say that the nursery team were supportive during the COVID-19 pandemic. This helped parents to overcome anxiety about bringing their children to nursery when it reopened. As a result, children settled quickly when they returned. Staff make sure that daily routines are appropriate for children's stage of development. This helps them to promote children's positive participation. Children behave well. They make good progress from their starting points.

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

• The manager ably demonstrates how his clear underlying principles for the curriculum meet the needs of the children. For example, he intends new children to learn how to care for nursery equipment. At the start of the autumn term, staff limit what toys are available. They teach children how to use them and put them away. This lays the foundation for thoughtful, purposeful play. Children find out what is expected of them and this promotes their independence.
• Managers are ambitious for their own and staff's achievement. This sets a positive example for children. Managers observe staff teaching and give feedback that is generally helpful. However, managers do not analyse the detail of the teaching they observe closely enough. It is sometimes not clear what staff need to do to improve. This does not help them to achieve the highest quality of teaching that promotes children's swiftest progress.
• The experienced, well-qualified team help children to build on what they know and can do. Children show an interest in little foam numbers. Staff tell younger children the number names. Children laugh when staff peep at them through the number-shaped holes in the foam. Staff help older children to remember the number names. They teach them that numerals tell us how many. Children's learning is therefore sequenced effectively.
• Staff join in with children's pretend play. They help children to look after the baby dolls that live in the home corner. Children demonstrate what they already know about caring for babies. Staff listen and extend children's knowledge. Children learn and use new vocabulary as they play.
• Children who speak English as an additional language are supported well. For example, staff tell children the English words for the fruit in their snack boxes. They playfully repeat the word every time children eat another piece of the fruit. The repetition helps children to work towards speaking English confidently.
• Staff know which challenges children are ready to meet. At the end of snack time, children who have finished eating are impatient to leave the table. Staff skilfully support them to wait just a little bit longer, until snack time ends. This teaches children to follow routines and they begin to develop self-control. This helps children to benefit from education now and in the future.
• Children's physical development is promoted effectively. Younger children use all their strength to lift footballs up high and then throw them. They begin to gain the balance they need to kick the balls towards the encouraging staff.
• Children develop habits that promote their personal development. For example, children know that they must switch off tablet computers when a programme or activity is completed. This helps children to learn about limiting their screen time.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus more closely on the detail of staff's teaching, so that support for improving staff's practice is even more effective and children make the swiftest possible progress in their learning.