Happy Days Childcare

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision requires improvement Children readily leave their parents and happily engage with familiar staff. They take part in a range of activities that staff plan for them.

For example, children engage well in active play opportunities both indoors and outside. Leaders place a strong focus on supporting children's language and communication skills. Some staff demonstrate this well and engage children in conversation.

They narrate children's play and use key words in children's home languages to support them. However, some staff members, particularly those working with younger children, are not as confident in delivering the curriculum. As a result, ch...ildren do not always receive the highest level of teaching to help them learn as much as they can.

Overall, children behave appropriately. Staff encourage children to take turns as they play. The children are familiar with daily routines, such as washing their hands before meals and after using the toilet.

This helps them develop self-care skills.Staff promote an understanding of healthy lifestyles among children. They provide stimulating activities such as cutting and exploring real vegetables in the outdoor role-play kitchen.

Staff use this opportunity to help children gain an understanding of fractions by discussing how to cut the vegetables into halves and quarters. Children use their imaginations as they move their vegetables to cooking pots and tell staff how long the food needs to cook.

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

Staff focus the curriculum on key stories and rhymes to enhance children's language and literacy skills.

Children listen attentively to a story about an enormous turnip. Staff introduce children to alternative words such as 'gigantic' to describe the size of the vegetable in the story. Staff read with expression and enthusiasm and invite children to talk about the characters.

This supports children's literacy development and fosters a love of reading.The nursery has an effective curriculum aimed at developing children's physical skills. The indoor and outdoor environments offer children areas to explore and build on their physical skills and strength.

Older children climb on the apparatus and swing on monkey bars. Younger children demonstrate good coordination and spatial awareness as they use pedal bicycles and practise their balancing skills. These opportunities allow children the freedom to move and build on their upper and lower body strength.

Staff identify children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and those with gaps in their learning. However, the procedures in place to monitor and review children's progress are not effective enough to ensure children make the best possible progress. Furthermore, staff are unsure if children have specific strategies from other professionals to implement as they have not gathered this information.

Staff have started to implement some strategies which support children to regulate their behaviour, such as creating quiet spaces within the classrooms, to go if they feel overwhelmed. Staff use positive praise and encouragement, which helps to boost children's confidence and self-esteem. However, sometimes staff are not consistent in their approach to helping children understand the nursery rules and boundaries.

For instance, some children are reminded not to run inside the classroom, while others are not. Consequently, children do not always listen or respond to staff's requests and do not gain a clear understanding of the expectations for behaviour.The provider has some basic supervision arrangements in place for staff.

However, these are not effective or carried out regularly enough to monitor staff practice and teaching skills. This means that staff do not always receive constructive feedback to identify weaknesses in their practice. As a result, some staff feel overwhelmed and lack confidence in their roles.

Feedback from parents and carers demonstrates that children enjoy their time at the nursery. Staff communicate with parents when they collect their children and through an online platform. However, these are not fully effective at keeping parents up to date on their children's progress and development.

This includes feedback to parents whose children have individual support plans in place. This means parents are not aware of the progress their children have made or how to further support children's learning at home.

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 meet the requirements of the early years foundation stage, the provider must: Due date improve the arrangements in place to support children with SEND or gaps in their learning, including working with other professionals to help them make the best possible progress 29/11/2024 improve supervision arrangements to give staff the support, coaching and training they need to help raise the overall quality of teaching to a consistently good level 29/11/2024 improve partnership with parents to ensure an ongoing, two-way exchange of information so parents are kept informed and involved in their child's progress and learning.29/11/2024 To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: nensure all staff understand and implement the nursery's strategies for managing children's behaviour.