The Early Years Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Staff greet families as they arrive at this warm and welcoming nursery.

Children know the staff well and respond happily when they see their kind and familiar faces. Children begin learning as soon as they enter. For example, staff encourage them to recognise and find their name cards and self-register.

This helps children to feel a sense of identity and develop early letter recognition, fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Staff effectively support children's emotional and physical well-being. Children are secure and settled, and relationships between staff and children are warm and nurturing.

Childre...n learn how to share and take turns, and they are well behaved and confident. Staff encourage children to manage their behaviour and offer positive reinforcement. Staff provide an ambitious curriculum to help support children to make progress from their starting points.

Staff support children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) effectively. Children enjoy outdoor play and re-enact their recent train journey into London, which helps contribute to their understanding of the world around them. Children pretend to get onto the tube and talk about the different tube lines and where the train is taking them.

Children enjoy playing in the mud kitchen, where they experiment with real food and develop their imagination and speaking skills.

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

Staff support children with SEND well. Staff carefully observe and assess children's abilities when they start and continue to watch them in order to put plans in place for their future learning.

Staff work closely with parents and external agencies to offer extra support, or support in a different way, to make sure all children are able to learn. For example, children access the well-resourced sensory room to support them to use their senses to their full potential.Partnerships with parents are strong.

Parents speak highly of the staff and the care and effort they put in while caring for their children. There is a constant two-way flow of communication. However, at times, parents are not made aware of their child's next steps in learning.

Therefore, they are not always clear about how staff are supporting children in the nursery. Staff provide stay-and-play sessions for parents and invite them to join in yearly celebrations. Parents are invited to join staff and children on trips out, such as the recent trip to London to view the Christmas decorations.

The leadership team is very supportive in its approach towards the staff. Staff have regular supervisions and opportunities for training. All of these factors help staff to support children better.

However, at times, staff do not always use their interactions with children to implement the curriculum to get the most out of children's learning. That said, staff provide well-resourced exciting play spaces indoors and outdoors. Leaders keep staff updated about any organisational changes and offer any support they may need.

Staff support babies during snack time. Staff offer babies healthy snacks to help provide them with the energy and nutrition that they need. They are encouraged to learn good eating behaviours.

Staff promote good hygiene routines. For example, babies clean their hands before eating and staff talk to them, helping to support their communication and language skills.Toddlers enjoy listening to stories read by staff as they sit comfortably on the carpet.

Children concentrate and make connections with what they already know about the story. They develop their imagination as they talk about the story and anticipate what is coming next.Pre-school children enjoy messy play, creating pictures with paints.

Staff offer ongoing commentary to support their learning.Children take on different characters as they take part in role-play activities. They act out being builders and building roads using different tools.

They use their imagination to bring these roles to life.Staff meet children's care needs well. For example, staff ensure children's nappies are changed regularly and that sleep routines are supervised to ensure children's safety.

Staff use care routines as opportunities for learning. For example, children learn to dress and undress and put on their shoes independently.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

There is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children's interests first.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: strengthen communication between parents so that they are updated more frequently about their child's next steps in learning, to further build parental partnerships and support children's learning.support staff to further develop their knowledge of the curriculum, so that they can make the most of their interactions with children to help support children's learning even more.