Kids Planet Frodsham

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Staff have a detailed knowledge of what children need to learn next. This means they can work learning into every aspect of the children's day.

Staff are quick to use children's favourite stories or things that have happened at home as the starting point for fun activities. This enthrals children and excites their imaginations, ensuring even the youngest children are highly motivated to join in. Pre-schoolers fizz with excitement as they all become 'detectives' and carefully follow a trail of 'evil peas'.

They listen intently and identify the sound clues in their teacher's special box. This is one way children b...uild and consolidate the skills they need for learning to read. All children's opinions are valued.

The pre-school children have a committee where they discuss issues and make decisions as a group. This helps develop their sense of self-worth, ability to speak in front of a group and the importance of listening to others' points of view.Staff have high expectations for all children.

Older babies in the Tots room are provided with props and supported by the highly expressive staff to retell their favourite stories and sing songs. This helps to build these very young children's memories and develops a love of books. Toddlers carefully consider how they will solve problems.

They decide the way to reduce the size of the fruit to fit it in their container is to eat some of it. Children have superb physical skills. Toddlers practise and perfect their ability to handle tools during mealtimes.

Babies smile with delight as they manage to walk using a push-along toy for the first time or carefully concentrate as they successfully place wooden rings on the pole. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) have tailored support to drive their development. Adjustments are made to support those with physical disabilities to safely access learning opportunities.

Where appropriate, they are very well supported to start to communicate their needs using sign language. On the day of the inspection, staff are delighted when a child expresses his need for 'more' using sign language for the first time.

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

The nursery manager is proud to be part of the Kids Planet family of nurseries.

She feels that she and her staff are very well supported by the local and national leadership. Clear supervision processes are in place and the manager has a strong oversight of staff abilities. She works closely with staff to identify development opportunities to continually improve children's learning.

For example, staff have accessed phonics, sign language and developing boys' maths training. Other staff have been supported to obtain their qualified teacher status or take on a lead role to champion physical activity and nutritional issues. Apprentices talk about how inspiring they find working with, and learning from, the staff.

Excellent engagement with parents means that staff gather lots of information about children to help them support children's learning. Parents feel extremely supported to develop their child's learning at home. The staff use online systems to exchange information with parents and keep them informed.

They supply parents with individual resource packs and organise group training sessions, for example, on phonics, online safety or baby massage. If parents raise issues with the manager, she reflects on what they have said and, where appropriate, quickly makes changes to improve practice. Parents praise the range of food their children enjoy and say staff cater for 'fussy' children well.

The management team and staff have been innovative in the way they have kept in touch and supported families when nursery was closed due to COVID 19 (coronavirus). Some children and staff transferred to another nursery run by the company. For those children not able to attend at that time, staff were aware that they were spending a lot of time at home.

The staff made story-based picture trails in the windows of the closed shops in the town, for children to find. They read stories and supplied parents with the videos and set challenges for children; for example, to find items or build structures of a certain shape.The managers have very clear expectations of what they want the children to learn.

Their learning intentions for each child build on what children know and can do, and are securely understood and used by the staff in each room. Staff recognise that children need to have a solid understanding of concepts and are given varied opportunities to practise new skills. Staff identify children who are at risk of falling behind and put structured interventions in place which are monitored and reviewed.

Similarly, children who are exceeding expectations have interventions to ensure they are challenged.There is a very strong emphasis on a broad curriculum. For example, children enjoy a mini first-aid session.

Parents are amazed when their child is able to put them into the recovery position. Children think about what makes everyone and every family unique as they learn about the Pride festival. An international football competition is used as a prompt to take a more detailed look at the countries and their flags.

Inspiring outside play spaces are tailored to the needs of the ages in each of the rooms. Some babies will not have been to a beach and can experience sand between their toes in the beach area. Children's enthusiasm gives the impression that life at nursery is an adventure that they want to grab with both hands.

Children who are less confident are well supported and staff extend their understanding in short one-to-one exchanges.The nursery has a number of children with SEND. The staff member who is the special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) has a very clear overview of children with SEND in all rooms.

She shows determination to provide the best possible outcome for children, both within their time at the nursery and to ensure everything is in place for when they start school. Children's progress is consistently tracked and where necessary rapid referrals are made to outside agencies. The SENCO has a bank of knowledge which she draws on to help staff put in place meaningful and appropriate interventions while they are waiting for outside help and support.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The manager and staff have a very clear understanding of their individual responsibility to keep children safe and understand what would constitute a safeguarding concern. They welcome professional development opportunities to work as part of a multidisciplinary team to develop their knowledge and experience, protect children and support the whole family to help improve outcomes.

Four staff members are trained as designated safeguarding leads so there is always someone on site for staff to seek help from if they become concerned. Accidents are reviewed to identify anything that can be changed to protect children. Parents report that they are telephoned when accidents occur, so they are aware of what has happened.