Little Stars Childcare

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

The passionate managers and their enthusiastic staff team create an extremely positive and nurturing environment for children. Children are particularly happy, safe and secure and, overall, engage busily in a wide range of stimulating and challenging experiences. The managers have identified outdoor learning as a key focus for their curriculum and children delight in exploring the adventurous garden.

They are very physically active and show a keen interest in exploring and investigating nature. For example, during exciting forest school sessions, children explore fire in a safe, yet intriguing, environment. Overall, staff have ...high expectations for children's learning and behaviour, and children quickly gain the skills needed for the next stage in their education.

They benefit from an inspiring variety of trips into the local community. For example, babies regularly visit local parks to collect natural objects, and older children visit residents at a local retirement home. These trips help to broaden children's experiences and develop their respect for people of different ages, cultures and backgrounds.

Staff build strong and loving bonds with all the children, who show high levels of self-esteem and well-being. Babies benefit from a particularly calm and cosy environment, which they explore with great confidence. They settle quickly and staff are highly attentive to their individual needs and routines.

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

Staff assess children's development precisely and focus heavily on children's interests to provide an ambitious and broad curriculum. Children are immediately drawn to the wide range of stimulating activities that link closely to what they know and enjoy. For example, pre-school children enthusiastically work together to build complex structures with wooden blocks and excitedly decide what to cook in the role-play kitchen.

They delight in joining in with highly engaging yoga sessions led by a professional teacher and show great control over their bodily movements.Babies show great curiosity in their play and are inquisitive about their environment. They eagerly explore the texture of dough and learn to mould it with their hands and tools, developing strong physical skills.

They are very confident movers and thoroughly enjoy navigating challenging indoor steps and ramps safely. Babies learn new words quickly and staff support their early language development with great skill. Staff consistently describe what babies see, do and hear and use sign language to support their understanding and ability to communicate even further.

Staff have recently started to focus more on supporting children through spontaneous learning opportunities and, overall, this is proving successful. However, some staff do not yet make the best use of their interactions with older children to fully extend their thoughts and offer further challenge.Staff ignite a love of books and stories with children of all ages, including with their parents at home.

They read enthusiastically and make stories highly engaging and interactive. For example, babies snuggle into staff's laps as they help turn pages and feel different textures. Older children eagerly join in with an array of props and help to act out stories, such as when building a brick house for 'The Three Little Pigs'.

Staff use story times to introduce new languages and celebrate the different home languages spoken by children. For instance, during the inspection, children listened intently to a story in Italian and repeated certain phrases back with glee.The highly dedicated managers work together, and with staff, as a well-oiled team.

Together, they reflect closely on the nursery and continually drive improvement. For example, they recently focused on children's health and ran a successful initiative inspiring families to walk to nursery, rather than drive.The managers lead staff very well and foster a highly positive atmosphere for staff well-being and progression.

They take care to know staff strengths and areas for further development and offer valuable support for their professional development. Despite this, further monitoring and support are needed to consistently achieve the highest quality of education in the pre-school.Staff are strong and positive role models and guide children's behaviour sensitively.

Children are kind, helpful and considerate to one another. They actively include others in their play and show strong social skills. For example, children politely take turns when serving their lunch and listen thoughtfully to each other's ideas during their imaginary play.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The managers and staff have a thorough understanding of how to keep children safe. Recruitment procedures are robust.

The managers ensure that all staff are continually suitable for their roles. Staff receive regular training, including quizzes, to help them to know when children might be at risk of harm. They understand how to identify child protection concerns and what action to take to report concerns.

Children are also taught to keep themselves safe. For example, staff use age-appropriate stories to remind children about using the internet safely.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: continue to monitor and support pre-school staff and focus on raising the quality of practice and children's experiences to a consistently outstanding level make the most of all staff interactions to fully support and extend children's ideas and offer further challenge.