Woodside Barn Day Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children continuously demonstrate that they feel happy, confident, safe and secure. They enjoy the time that they spend in this warm and welcoming nursery. Staff gather a wide range of information from parents about their child when they first start to attend. This helps to ensure that children settle quickly into nursery life and their individual needs are well met.

Children demonstrate an impressive enthusiasm for learning. They lead their own learning, making decisions about what they would like to experience and play with. Staff have high expectations of all children. They provide a curriculum that challenges and motivates children to make good progress. For example, following their interest in the weather, older children discuss what happens to the clouds when it rains. They experiment by dropping coloured water through a foam cloud at the top of a jar. Children estimate how many drops the cloud will hold before it 'rains' in the jar. They discuss how sometimes the rain 'evaporates' before it hits the ground.

Children's personal, social and emotional development has been a focus of learning since the COVID-19 pandemic. They have plentiful opportunities to help them to gain confidence and develop their relationships with others. Children are kind, considerate and exceptionally well behaved.

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

• Children develop impressive communication skills. They eagerly enter into conversations with staff, each other and visitors. Older children use complex vocabulary to help to express themselves. For example, when discussing the importance of visiting the dentist, children remind the inspector of the importance of brushing her teeth for two minutes. They state that she must do this twice daily to avoid 'cavities' and 'extractions.' This demonstrates that children are aware of the importance of being healthy.
• Staff encourage children to be confident and self-assured. Overall, children are very independent and determined to do things for themselves. For example, they remove their own shoes and socks before attempting to draw around their feet. However, occasionally, the nurturing staff do things for children that they could attempt to do for themselves, in order to increase their confidence and independence even further.
• Staff have a good understanding of the ways in which children prefer to learn and use this knowledge well as they build upon children's previous experiences and introduce new concepts and skills. For example, staff recognise that children learn best when they are physically active. They plan for them to explore differences in size and encourage children to draw around each other's bodies and compare who is the tallest and shortest.
• Parents speak very highly of the levels of care their child receives while at the nursery. They refer to the nursery as a home from home and praise staff for their kindness and the relationships they develop with families. Staff support parents to understand the progress that their child makes. They share detailed information and suggestions on how parents can support their child's learning at home. Parents value the recent introduction of online communication systems.
• The manager has a clear vision for the nursery that she shares with all staff. She is determined to offer early years experiences of the highest quality. Overall, leaders have a good programme of support, coaching and training for staff. The manager observes staff as they work with children and offers additional training to help staff to fulfil their role effectively. However, targets agreed with staff are not always precise and targeted enough to help them fully understand how to develop and extend their teaching skills to the highest levels.
• Staff link closely with other settings that children attend. They share information to help to ensure continuity in the approach to children's care and learning. Arrangements for children's transition to school have been different as a result of the pandemic. However, staff have worked hard to ensure that links are maintained, and that important information is shared during telephone and video calls.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to consistently identify and use all opportunities for children to extend their independence even further through their routines and activities
• strengthen the arrangements for staff supervision and provide more targeted and precise support to each member of staff, that helps to build on their good teaching skills even further.