Children 1st @ Meir Park

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children are highly independent and demonstrate that they feel exceptionally safe and secure in this inspiring setting. They are welcomed each day to an environment and activities that ignite their excitement and curiosity. For example, children deeply engage with a junk modelling activity.

They excitedly show staff the progress they make with their models. Children benefit from warm relationships with staff and their peers and initiate conversations with their friends. They are confident communicators.

A culture of respect is fostered through the way staff and children speak to one another. Communication and la...nguage is a key focus, and staff narrate children's play effectively. During whole-group sessions, children practise their phonics and notice how their mouth moves with different letters.

Staff have high expectations of children's behaviour. Children respond well to opportunities for responsibility. For example, a dinner monitor is appointed daily to lay the table ready for lunch, and children serve their own food.

Children take turns brilliantly. They wait patiently to scrape their dinner plate at the sink one at a time and stack them neatly. The curriculum is excellent, and children's attitudes towards their learning are outstanding.

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

Leadership and management are exceptionally strong. The manager provides a robust induction and prioritises staff's ongoing performance to maintain high standards. Staff's well-being is given high priority, and there are welfare strategies in place to support this.

Staff access plenty of training, such as speech and language. This helps staff to develop a deeper understanding of how children learn and their role in enabling this.Staff know children exceptionally well.

They diligently observe and assess their abilities. They plan and provide a wide range of interesting experiences to build on what children know and can do. Children are highly challenged in their learning and well supported to reach their full potential.

The manager works closely with schools to help children prepare for this eventual move. For example, uniforms from local schools are available for children to explore in the role-play area.Children develop a love of reading.

Staff read stories to children consistently throughout the day. The manager has introduced a story-swap station. Children enjoy bringing in a book from home and exchanging it for a different one.

Babies confidently explore the environment as they begin to make sense of their world. For example, they are fascinated by sensory experiences, such as water and bubbles. Their social skills are supported to the highest level.

This is demonstrated when babies sit together, share sponges and pat the water to make the bubbles squirt.An excellent partnership with parents is in place. Parents speak so highly of the setting and cannot praise the staff enough.

They comment on how the children are fully supported and always learning new things. The staff settle any new children with great care, ensuring they have a rounded understanding of their individual needs before they start. Parents are extremely positive about the effective, ongoing communication between the highly valued staff and themselves.

Staff work closely as a team and put the needs and interests of the children and families first at all times. Relationships between everyone involved are respectful and warm.Highly qualified and experienced staff provide exceptional opportunities to promote children's communication, language and listening skills.

For example, staff plan language activities with a parachute to help expand children's vocabulary on directional and positional relationships, such as 'high and low', 'stop and go' and 'fast and slow'. Children listen intently to instructions from each other and respond accordingly.Reflective practice is exemplary.

The manager has a clear and ambitious vision for the setting. She constantly questions herself and reviews all elements of the provision. She takes account of the views of staff, children and parents in setting targets and aims for the future.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The premises are safe and secure. Staff are trained and can identify a cause for concern and know the action to take to protect children.

Staff teach children how to be safe within the rooms. For example, staff ask children to wait for their friends to move from the bottom of the slide before other children slide down, and they teach children what might happen if they swing their arms around in a busy, small space. Managers implement safer recruitment processes, and staff are suitable and inducted effectively.

Ratios are maintained, and children are supervised well. Staff deployment is effective to keep children safe. Risk assessments are carried out, and equipment and resources are safe.