Croft Day Nursery Bexleyheath

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children flourish at this welcoming and nurturing nursery. They have strong bonds with their key person and show they feel safe and secure.

Children are eager learners. For example, they show great enthusiasm to join in with planned activities and happily play alongside their peers.Children confidently explore the well-resourced environment and follow their own interests.

For example, babies spend time exploring the textures of different materials. Toddlers benefit from lots of opportunities to develop their large-muscle skills as they balance blocks to make a tall tower. Older children learn to follow the rules of gam...es and encourage each other to join in.

Children settle extremely well on arrival. Staff spend time during the settling-in period to gather detailed information about children's care routines, background experiences and their interests. They carefully use this information to support children's emotional needs.

This helps children to settle into the new environment.Children behave well, demonstrating they understand the high expectations of them. Children across all age groups know the routines of the day.

For example, they know to use hand sanitiser when arriving at nursery and wash their hands before mealtimes. Children form friendships easily and are respectful, kind and caring towards each other.

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

The management team and staff have made considerable developments and show a commitment to continue to improving standards, since the last inspection.

Management support staff's well-being successfully and provide them with useful professional development opportunities to extend their knowledge and skills. For example, staff recently attended training to help enhance their knowledge in supporting children's emotional development. The manager highly values the views and opinions of children, staff and parents to help continue to raise the quality of the nursery even further.

The manager and staff monitor children's progress successfully. They swiftly identify aspects of children's development where they need additional help, and implement targeted support. They work closely with other professionals involved in children's development to ensure that children with special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress.

Staff find out what children can do on entry to the nursery and use assessments effectively to help identify any possible gaps in learning. However, at times, staff miss opportunities to challenge and extend learning further to support children to make even higher rates of progress.Staff speak very highly of the support they receive from their manager and clearly feel valued in their work.

They are committed and passionate to develop their skills to support children to make the very best progress in their development.Parents speak positively about the care their children receive. They feel that their children's learning is supported very well to help them make good progress.

Staff support children's communication and early literacy well. Children of all ages develop a love for books. Younger children thoroughly enjoy listening to stories.

They excitedly point to pictures in books and repeat familiar words. Older children begin to value what books are used for and learn the sequence of stories. Furthermore, children learn about letter sounds in their name.

Children who speak English as an additional language are made to feel welcome at the nursery. Staff use familiar words in children's first language in their play. This helps children feel included.

Younger children spend long periods of time engrossed in messy play activities. They enjoy experiencing the textures of wet and dry rice. Children develop their early language skills as staff skilfully introduce new words into their play, for example 'wet', 'dry', 'soft', 'hard' and 'sticky'.

Furthermore, children are supported well to develop their physical skills as they use spoons to scoop and pour the mixture into containers. Older children practise using their large-muscle skills as they build with blocks.Overall, all children are provided with various opportunities to learn and develop independence.

Babies are supported to begin to feed themselves. Toddlers independently make choices from easily accessible resources. However, this is not fully consistent across the whole nursery, in particular the pre-school rooms.

At times, staff will step in quickly to complete tasks that are achievable to children.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The manager ensures staff undertake regular safeguarding training and attend meetings to keep their knowledge up to date.

Staff have a secure knowledge of signs and symptoms that may show a child is at risk of harm and the procedures to follow to raise their concerns. This includes procedures to follow if an allegation is made against a member of staff. Risk assessment processes are effective.

The manager and staff make careful checks throughout the day to ensure the areas of nursery used for children are always safe. The manager completes robust checks to ensure staff are suitable.

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 develop the already good-quality teaching, and to extend children's learning during the implementation of the curriculum, to the highest level nenhance opportunities for children to learn and develop their independence consistently across the nursery.