The Cottage Private Day Nursery (Mansfield Road)

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children have a wonderful time at this very stimulating and safe nursery.

They are well behaved and demonstrate they are happy and content. They freely move around the rooms and outside, choosing their play. Children have a positive attitude to their learning.

They have many opportunities to develop their curiosity and explore the environment. For example, older children build towers and houses, using crates, blocks and large boxes. Younger children bang tins and saucepans and listen to the sounds they make.

Staff have high expectations for the children's learning. They know the children well and understand ho...w to move their learning forward. They provide exciting and interesting activities that help children to achieve as they play.

For example, children enjoy mixing play dough with flour, buttons and cotton buds. They make marks in the flour with their fingers and squeeze the dough as their make their creations. This helps to develop children's creativity and their small-muscle skills effectively.

Children use their personal skills successfully to help develop their independence. For example, older children serve their own lunch and pour their drinks. They listen to instructions, such as to tidy the toys away and do so willingly.

Younger children make attachments to their key person and go for cuddles and reassurance when necessary. They learn to put their coats on to go outside and negotiate the stairs successfully.

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

The manager is a strong leader.

She is focused and ambitious. She and her staff thrive to improve the nursery and have made many changes since the last inspection. For example, they have changed the outside environment, so children can use their investigation skills freely as they play.

The manager has established effective partnerships with parents and other professionals. She gathers information about children's routines and preferences before they start, to help the children settle. However, she does not fully seek information from parents about what children already know and can do when they first start.

This means staff are not able to provide opportunities to enrich children's current experiences from home when they first start at the nursery.Staff provide a wide range of experiences to challenge children's learning across the curriculum. For example, they provide a selection of beads, tins, boxes and bags.

These ignite younger children's learning as they drop beads into tins and enjoy the noises. They discover the more beads they use, the louder the noise. This helps to develop young children's listening skills.

Staff provide activities to help develop older children's reading skills. Staff read stories well and use props to help children to concentrate and understand the story. In addition, children write their own stories and re-enact them in front of each other.

This helps build their confidence and imagination.Children's good health is promoted. Staff provide children with nutritious meals.

They encourage children to drink water throughout the day. Staff remind children of the importance of washing their hands before meals and after playing in the garden. They provide opportunities to encourage the children to clean their teeth after lunch as part of keeping healthy.

Staff provide an inclusive environment. They are experienced in meeting the needs of children from a variety of cultural and family backgrounds. Staff support older children to develop skills for the future as they visit the local school and prepare them for their move when the time comes.

However, staff do not always fully extend children's knowledge and understanding of technology to help them to develop these skills for the future.Children develop friendships from an early age. They learn to share and take turns and older children are beginning to respect others.

Staff act as good role models, offering children frequent praise and encouragement, which builds their self-esteem. This is evident when children share the vegetables as they make 'soup' in the mud kitchen outside and become engrossed in their play. However, at times, staff interrupt children's play to carry out group activities and daily routines.

This does not fully support children's learning and enjoyment.Managers supervise staff effectively. They offer staff regular one-to-one meetings to help improve their performance.

Staff attend further training to build on their current knowledge and skills. This has a positive impact on the quality of teaching. For instance, they have recently completed a course on 'Vocabulary Matters'.

This has helped staff to extend children's language skills. Children are beginning to use descriptive words as they talk. For example, they say words such as 'it's very long grass' and 'swirly, whirly pool'.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The manager and staff understand their responsibilities towards child protection issues. They know the procedure to follow if they have any concerns about a child in their care.

The manager and staff attend regular safeguarding training to update their knowledge and learn about the wider issues related to child protection. The manager includes discussions about safeguarding children in staff meetings to ensure staff understand new legislation. Procedures for recruitment are robust.

Regular monitoring helps to ensure staff are regularly checked for their ongoing suitability to work with children. This helps to ensure children's safety and overall well-being.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: review the daily routines to enable children to finish their play to their full satisfaction to support their learning and enjoyment thoroughly strengthen the existing partnerships with parents and gather detailed information about what children know and can do when they first start at the nursery to build on their future learning provide more opportunities for children to experience and learn about technology to help develop these skills for their future learning.