Kids Planet Southport

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children move around their rooms happily. They investigate interesting objects and enjoy a wide range of sensory experiences that support their curiosity, creativity and imagination.

Children explore different substances and textures. For example, at the inspection, some children handled turnips, potatoes, red peppers and parsnips in compost, while others handled ice. Staff make good use of these opportunities to help children learn more about the world around them and support their language development.

Three-year-old children name different volcanoes and talk knowledgeably about them using words such as 'magma' and '...erupt'. Children use the new words they have learned, which help them to express their feelings. For example, a child says he feels peaceful while sitting with his feet in a foot spa.

Children have many opportunities to recognise what makes them unique. They talk about themselves, their families and a range of different emotions. Children learn about the local community on many varied visits, including to the supermarket and local parks.

Outings, such as visiting the Eurovision song contest village and identifying European flags also inspire children to talk about different countries. The curriculum is sequenced well to build from the baby room to when children leave to start school. Staff work closely with parents and other professionals to support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

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

Leaders and managers demonstrate a strong vision. They consult staff, parents and children to help identify how they can build on the good-quality care and education. Children are involved in decision-making.

For example, older children keenly suggest ideas for their sports day.Children's health benefits from a wide range of physical activities, which challenge their movement, balance and coordination. Babies benefit from regular tummy time, which helps to strengthen their back, neck, shoulders and core muscles.

Older children climb on and walk along low-level equipment purposefully placed in their rooms. They also learn racquet skills on regular visits to the local tennis courts.Children develop the physical movements needed for later writing in a range of ways.

They manipulate dough, run their fingers through substances, including oats and compost, and make marks with paint, chalk, crayons and coloured ice. Children also learn that print carries meaning through activities, such as making passports for travel on their role-play airplane.Many opportunities help to develop children's reading skills.

Children make themselves comfortable in reading areas and look at books. They listen to stories read well by staff. They refer to recipe books while making pretend food from dough, which helps them to understand that books hold information.

Staff increase children's mathematical vocabulary as they play. For example, at the inspection, a child is helped to talk about size and matching pairs while searching for gardening gloves that fit. While enjoying drawing with broccoli in paint, children are helped to identify and name different shapes, such as circles and squares.

Overall, partnership with parents is strong. For example, parents are welcomed into the nursery. They help themselves to coffee and fruit and can sit together to chat.

They are also offered 'home learning' bags with ideas and resources to continue learning at home. A different policy is displayed each month, as well as other useful information, such as the impact of day-time use of dummies on speech development. This helps to keep parents well informed.

Staff make good use of their own observations and assessments and information from parents where available. They identify what children know and can do and decide what children need to learn next to help them make good progress.Overall, children behave well.

However, on occasion, during whole-group activities, staff in the 'rising three' room lose focus on what they want children to learn and some children's engagement declines.There are clear systems in place for supervising and monitoring staff practice. These help staff to reflect on their own practice and identify how they can develop their skills further.

Staff are making increasingly good use of what they learn on training to support children.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Staff refresh their knowledge of safeguarding regularly and understand how to identify and report concerns.

Managers check staff's knowledge regularly and share new information, which helps to keep their knowledge up to date. Most staff hold a current paediatric first-aid certificate and are trained to deal with incidents, such as choking. Since the last inspection, all staff have refreshed their training on how to manage children's behaviour and how to assess risks.

Children take turns to be a health and safety officer. They wear a hard hat and fluorescent vest and check for hazards, which they note on a clipboard.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: plan group times more carefully to support children's engagement and make the best possible use of opportunities to learn make even greater use of what parents know about their children to support ongoing assessment.