Funshine Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children are exceptionally confident and very keen learners. Staff provide an excellent variety of very inspiring activities, balanced by child-led play, which ensures that children are highly engaged in tasks. Staff are exceptionally clear about what children need to learn in order to move them on in their development.

Staff use excellent observations to ensure that children are challenged very successfully. All children make excellent progress. Staff support children's understanding of the natural world in exceptionally effective ways.

For instance, children take part in high-quality forest school sessions in ...the garden, where they explore the natural environment. They discover a variety of minibeasts and can name, sort and group them accurately. Staff provide exceptional opportunities for children to develop their creative skills.

For instance, children work in very open-ended ways, using a very diverse, interesting and stimulating range of tools and materials. Staff also give children refreshingly creative activities, such as painting with sticks. Babies take part in body painting and older children create inspiring collage work, using a wide range of natural and manufactured resources.

Staff provide excellent opportunities for children to develop a broad variety of physical skills. Children take part in specialist outdoor forest school sessions, run by a qualified instructor. During these sessions, they learn physical coordination skills, such as aiming, throwing, catching and balancing, through exciting and challenging organised group games and building work.

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

Staff teach children excellent early literacy skills in innovative and highly effective ways. For instance, children immerse themselves in storytelling by using a broad range of props related to their interests or favourite stories, and record their stories using technology. The dedicated 'immersive storytelling area' is rich in displayed vocabulary, where children learn words such as water 'buffalo', 'Brazilian wandering spider' and 'tamarind'.

Many older children are able to read simple words as a result of a carefully designed literacy programme.Staff provide exceptional ways for children to understand and manage their feelings. Children use a carefully managed 'buddy board', where they select photographs of children they want to play with and a 'friendship house' in the garden, where children who need a friend sit for company.

Staff also show children pictures of different emotional situations and discuss what they could do to resolve things. As a result, children handle their emotions and behaviour exceptionally well, including sharing and taking turns. They have high regard for themselves and others from different cultural and religious backgrounds.

Staff form strong, very nurturing bonds with children. They take great care to find out all they can about children's personalities, home care routines and interests to ensure that children settle exceptionally well and thoroughly enjoy activities. Staff go on home visits to begin to build a relationship with children and to get to know them exceptionally well to cater very successfully for their needs.

Children acquire excellent independence skills. Even younger children fetch their own sleeping bags at sleep time and put their blankets and mats away once they have woken up. All children serve themselves at meal and snack times, and older ones take responsibility for small tasks, such as laying the table.

Children behave in very safe ways. For example, they tuck chairs under tables when they leave. They also carry out small supervised risk assessments for themselves while playing outdoors, such as how high they should climb on frames.

Staff provide excellent support to children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff have very close links with parents and others involved in children's care and learning and ensure that information is routinely and comprehensively shared. Staff devise thorough support plans with highly relevant targets, which are reviewed, to ensure that children make excellent progress.

Staff work very successfully with parents. They provide excellent opportunities for parents to support their children's learning. For instance, the manager gives parents specific highly effective advice on how they can support children's communication and language skills, and staff provide home-learning activity ideas that support this area extremely well.

Staff keep parents closely informed about their children's progress in a variety of highly effective ways.The manager supports staff exceptionally well. Through robust, regular supervision and thorough routine observations of staff, she provides personalised training to meet their professional needs very successfully.

Staff have attended a wide range of courses, including a course on supporting early mathematical development which led to great improvements in this area.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Staff have an excellent understanding of the signs and symptoms to be aware of relating to concerns regarding a child's welfare.

Staff have a full understanding of the procedures to follow to deal with their concerns and they receive robust, regular training to update their skills and knowledge. The manager has established excellent systems for ensuring that children are readily identified and supported, where necessary. She carries out thorough background checks on all staff as part of the recruitment process.