Sunshine Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Staff work well together as an enthusiastic team. A well-established key-person system helps children form secure attachments. Positive relationships between staff and children are evident.

Children show that they feel safe and secure, as they happily investigate the well-resourced environment, and are eager and enthusiastic to learn. The nursery provides good quality support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. For example, the sensory support team visit the nursery weekly to work with staff and hearing-impaired children and staff are beginning to learn British Sign Language.

There is a goo...d focus on mathematical development and children have numerous opportunities to explore numbers through everyday activities, both indoors and outside. Children are encouraged to talk about and use numbers during their play and demonstrate a good understanding of simple addition. For example, they know that if they add two numbers together, they will have a bigger number.

Staff have high expectations for every child and have built a curriculum based on children's interests and what they need to learn next. They work well with parents and other professionals, to ensure that any child who needs additional help quickly receives the support they need to enable them to progress. Overall, staff interact well with children and children respond positively to them.

However, some staff interactions with children are not as effective as they could be, to ensure that children sustain high levels of interest throughout all activities.

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

Staff provide a rich set of experiences that promote children's understanding of the wider world and people who help them. For example, the police visited the setting and spoke to children who listened with great interest and responded to questions.

When asked if they know what high visibility jackets are for, children said 'so they can be seen in the dark'. The police officer reinforced that it is not safe for children to run away from their parents. Children talk about crossing roads safely and know they must hold hands and check both ways.

Children benefit from a wide range of opportunities to be physically active. They spend lots of time playing in the large well-resourced outdoor area. In addition, they have access to a forest school outdoor experience, which they visit regularly.

This helps them to learn about the natural environment, how to handle risks and how to cooperate with others.Children behave well and develop strong social skills. They make positive friendships and happily include others in their play.

Staff use positive strategies to manage children's behaviour. They have clear rules to help children to understand the behaviours that are acceptable and those that are not. Children are kind to others and respectful to the resources.

Careful monitoring and reviews of children's progress ensure that staff quickly identify any gaps, delays, or strengths in children's development. They use this information to implement targeted support to help children to progress further.Staff provide stimulating activities that engage the interests of all children.

Consequently, children enjoy their learning and make good progress. However, some large-group activities are not as well organised as others. This leads to children losing interest and provides fewer opportunities for learning.

Partnerships with parents are good. Leaders and staff offer a good range of initiatives to engage, support and build on parents' interest in their children's development. For example, staff regularly discuss children's progress with them, send newsletters weekly and parents are invited to attend workshops, to help them to gain ideas on how they can support children's learning at home.

Children have good opportunities to develop their early literacy skills. They have access to a good variety of books and easily accessible writing resources. They recognise their own names, listen with interest to familiar stories, and record their thoughts and ideas during play.

The ambitious leadership team makes good use of one-to-one meetings to provide staff with regular feedback on their performance. However, the arrangements for the ongoing supervision of staff are not strong enough to clearly identify how individual staff members can raise the quality of their teaching practice to the highest level.Most practitioners are highly skilled at extending children's learning.

However, others could offer further challenge to children as they do not make full use of their questioning to encourage critical thinking.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The manager ensures that staff keep their safeguarding knowledge up to date, including through training.

Leaders regularly test their knowledge of the signs that might indicate a child is at risk of harm. Staff are aware of their roles and responsibilities in keeping children safe. They demonstrate a good understanding of what to do if they have any concerns about the welfare of a child.

Robust recruitment procedures ensure that adults working with children are suitable. The premises are safe and secure, and children are continuously supervised to keep them safe within the environment.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: strengthen practitioners' knowledge of skilful questioning to extend children's critical thinking skills to the highest level review further the organisation of activities and routines to help keep children focused and engaged in their learning build on the good systems for staff supervision and support, to further develop staff skills which enrich practice and improve outcomes for children.

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