Beacon Hill Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children learn valuable skills that will support them to navigate the world around them as they grow older.

Staff place great emphasis on supporting children's growing independence. From a young age, children demonstrate how they can look after their own care needs. For example, older babies recognise when they need to wipe their nose.

They toddle over to where the tissues are stored without prompting, clean their face, then place the used tissue in the bin. This shows the impact of how well staff are supporting children's early personal development, which continues throughout the nursery.Pre-school children build impo...rtant knowledge as they handle real money.

Staff respond quickly when children show this interest during their role play. They extend children's understanding as they explain about the shape of coins and their value by looking at the engraved number. Staff support older children's mathematical development further during other activities, such as baking.

Children show high levels of engagement and enjoyment as they follow staff's direction to measure out ingredients. They learn how to use weighing scales, and they count the number of eggs that the recipe requires. Staff ensure children's health and hygiene.

Children show how they have learned to independently wash their hands. They do this before and throughout the activity, including after they touch raw egg.

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

The management team members have taken swift action to address the weaknesses found at the last inspection.

They have made sure staff fully understand their safeguarding roles and responsibilities. This includes staff having secure knowledge to recognise when a child may not be safe or healthy. The manager ensures that staff promptly identify any emerging special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) that children have.

Staff take appropriate steps to support any gaps that they find in children's learning and development.The management team has effective oversight of the nursery. It monitors the progress that children are making through looking at staff's assessment information.

The management team and staff use this information to review and adapt the way in which they plan and deliver the curriculum to meet children's individual learning needs.Staff support children to learn about democracy and respecting the opinions of others. They invite children to vote so that they can be involved in making decisions about the nursery, such as what to name the new pet rabbits.

This helps children to learn useful strategies that will help them get along well with others in their community as they get older.Staff plan different activities to help children learn about and understand the natural world. Children nurture caterpillars as they wait in anticipation for them to transform into butterflies.

Staff teach children about life cycles and the habitat that bugs need to live. They plant flowers, fruit and vegetables in the nursery garden and involve children in helping to grow and then harvest their produce.In the most part, the activities that staff plan for children help them to secure their next steps in learning and make rapid progress.

However, occasionally, staff do not fully consider what skills children need to develop before they can practise more advanced learning. For instance, they introduce skills to babies, such as holding a paintbrush, which they are not yet developmentally ready for. When this happens, babies struggle to successfully hold and control the paintbrush.

Staff use a variety of successful techniques to support children's communication and language development. They help babies learn single words by clearly naming the items that they are playing with. They encourage older children to expand on what they are saying by asking questions in a way that prompts them to explain their answers.

That said, some staff do not notice when quieter children or those who struggle to express themselves spend periods of time without speaking. This is most noticeable during large group times and when children sit together to eat.Staff respond quickly when children start to show signs of disengagement from their learning.

They plan activities around things that children are interested in to sustain their attention. As a result, children behave well. They remain focused and show good levels of concentration throughout the day.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.There is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children's interests first.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: support staff to plan and deliver activities through which children can confidently build on what they already know and can do, particularly for those working with younger children strengthen staff's interactions with children to maximise the opportunities that children have to use their developing language skills throughout all of their daily activities.