Kangaroo Pouch Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

There is a calm, happy and sociable atmosphere at this nursery.

Staff place a high priority on children's emotional and physical development. Children develop warm and trusting bonds with their key person and the staff team. Staff greet parents at the door and children arrive eager to begin their day.

Children confidently choose the activities they wish to participate in. They are active and enthusiastic learners and particularly thrive when they join in physical activities outside. Children enjoy building and balancing with construction pieces.

They have great fun scaling the grassy slope and sitting down to ...shuffle down again.Children behave extremely well. They play cooperatively with their friends and respond well to the routines and boundaries in place.

Children talk confidently with staff and their friends. During painting activities outside, children excitedly press their hands and feet into the paint to print. They enjoy mixing the paint and exclaiming the new colours they have created.

Younger children thoroughly enjoy exploring the experiences provided. They develop curiosity while they immerse themselves in a variety of sensory experiences, including cereal, dough, water and sand play. The youngest children enjoy plenty of space indoors and outside to help them practise their early walking skills.

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

Leaders have created a broad curriculum, which includes a wide range of interesting activities and experiences. Staff provide plenty of praise and encouragement and children engage well in their learning. Overall, children make good progress in their learning.

However, while staff working with pre-school children plan age-appropriate activities. They do not consistently differentiate activities or teaching according to children's stages of development, to promote the highest rates of progress.Parent partnerships are good.

Staff share a wealth of information with parents, primarily through an online system. Staff are beginning to invite parents back into the nursery following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. For example, parents have attended for a Mother's Day celebration and dance session in the nursery garden.

The manager and staff involve other professionals to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Staff implement targeted plans to help meet the needs of these children. Staff use additional funding well to help to improve outcomes for children.

Staff working with younger children use labelling and repetition to help support children's growing vocabulary. They use descriptive language and narrate children's play. This helps to give meaning to what children are doing and ensures they hear a wide variety of words.

Staff use and teach children simple sign language to help all children to communicate well.Staff are good role models for children. They are kind and nurturing.

Children join in daily activities to help them to talk about how they are feeling. This promotes their emotional development. Older children know and understand the simple nursery rules.

They talk about using 'kind hands' and their 'listening ears'. Staff offer clear and consistent reminders, that help children to learn about expectations and boundaries.Staff promote children's independence well.

During meal and snack times, staff support children to learn how to complete tasks on their own. Children pour their own drinks; serve their own food and clear plates away. Before outdoor play, children demonstrate competence in getting their own shoes and coats on.

Children develop a great interest in books. For example, they become absorbed in a story about a bear hunt, jumping up to follow the actions in the story. Children borrow books to take home to read with their parents.

Staff share simple board books with the youngest children, who then pick them up to look at them independently.The manager sets a clear direction for continual improvement and implements ongoing action plans to achieve this. She uses well-researched initiatives and supports staff to build on their professional development.

For example, staff attend regular training, supervision and staff meetings. This has a positive impact on developing staff practice. However, staff would benefit from more support to help them to use assessment information.

To allow them to focus their teaching more precisely on what individual children need to learn next.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Staff ensure that children are safe at the nursery.

The manager makes sure that staff's knowledge is robust and up to date. Staff have a secure understanding of the possible signs that a child may be at risk of harm and know what to do if they have concerns. They also know how to make a safeguarding referral themselves, and what to do if they are concerned about the conduct of a colleague.

The premises are clean, secure and free from hazards. Leaders implement robust recruitment and vetting procedures to help ensure that staff are suitable for their roles.

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 use assessment information more accurately, to focus teaching more precisely on what individual children need to learn next provide more differentiation during activities to build on the learning for children at different ages and stages of development.