Pendley Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Staff know their key children well and are warm, kind and supportive. Children form close bonds with staff and feel safe and secure at nursery.

Babies show that they feel safe as they climb onto a staff member's lap for a cuddle. Older children arrive happily to find interesting resources that staff have set out for them. Staff encourage children to be creative and explain their ideas.

For example, children use boxes to create castles, building tall towers. They draw windscreen wipers on their towers and confidently state that this is because it is raining today. Staff challenge children to try and do more as they ask ...children how they can make their tower taller.

Children find extra boxes to build further and compare their towers. Children are confident and curious. They know where they can find familiar resources and are eager to speak with visitors.

They fetch their favourite books and bring these to visitors to read, acting out the story with enthusiasm. They clearly know and love the story, as they join in with familiar phrases. Reading is a regular occurrence at nursery and staff provide children with easy access to stories that they return to again and again.

Staff know and understand children's needs, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. They monitor children's development closely and address any concerns about potential delay swiftly to help close any gaps.

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

The manager has been highly reflective and worked with a range of support services.

This has helped her to make significant improvements since the last inspection. The manager acts as a strong role model to all staff and has shown them how to engage with children in much more positive ways.Staff feel well supported.

They recognise and appreciate the changes that have been made and praise the management that they receive. The manager has implemented, and continues to implement, worthwhile opportunities to help staff develop their skills. Training and engagement are focused on staff development needs, which underpins their improving practice.

Assessment is used securely to establish whether children meet expected levels of development. Staff gather information about things that children can do or cannot do when they arrive at the setting and support children to know and do more over time. They tactfully approach any gaps in children's development and work with relevant outside professionals to positively improve children's progress.

Overall, staff interact with children skilfully and give them time to explore new ideas. Staff use meaningful praise and encouragement to help children practise new skills. Occasionally, staff do not recognise that children want to return to activities to explore them further.

For example, some children want to continue exploring a tray of cornflour after they have washed their hands. Staff direct them to another activity rather than enabling them to follow their own idea through to its conclusion.Staff help babies to learn early language skills as they support them to make meaning of different sounds.

For instance, babies choose soft animals that link to rhymes and songs. When they choose a wolf, staff 'huff' and puff' and babies join in to make the puffing noise. However, while there is a wide range of sensory play on offer for children, staff do not always make this fully accessible to babies, or consider how they might adapt it to enable babies to explore further.

Children competently use small tools as they concentrate for a long time while cutting vegetables. Staff help them to handle safety knives and encourage them to explore what they find inside the vegetables. Children smell, taste and examine peppers and tomatoes.

They carefully extract peas from their pods and examine them. Staff extend this as they explain to children how the peas can grow into a pea plant.Parents all speak highly of the setting and praise the support and encouragement that their children receive.

The manager and staff have created a range of opportunities, such as a parent forum, to help them gather and respond to parent views. They speak regularly with parents about things that their children have been doing, and find out what children do in their home lives, to support continuity in children's development.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Leaders, managers and staff have comprehensive awareness of the signs and symptoms of potential concern. They are clear about the steps to take in order to refer concerns about children, or adults who work with children, without delay, to relevant agencies.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: continue to develop staff practice to promote more consistent support for children, and more effectively accommodate children's choices support staff who work with babies to make sensory experiences more accessible for babies.