The Trees Day Care Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children enjoy their time in this bright and welcoming nursery. They readily separate from their parents and are keen to explore the wide range of interesting activities and resources.

Staff support the children well during their play and encourage their language development effectively. For example, staff encourage babies to repeat simple words and sounds, and they repeat back simple sentences to toddlers, showing they are understood. Staff have meaningful conversations with older children.

They talk to children about people who are special to them, and how they make them feel, when children make faces with coloured s...tones. Children demonstrate they feel safe and secure and readily approach staff and invite them into their play. Children form good attachments with staff, who know the children's individual interests and needs well.

For example, when young children return to nursery from a holiday, staff know to offer them toys they enjoy to help them settle back in. Staff plan activities based on children's interests, such as learning about planets and dinosaurs, and include lots of resources for children to explore and use imaginatively. For example, after using pipe cleaners and wooden spoons to thread through the holes in metal pots, children turn the pots over, bang them with the spoons and sing songs.

Children are motivated to learn and concentrate well at their activities. They gain useful skills for their next stage in learning, including school.

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

Partnerships with parents are good.

Parents report that they receive regular information from staff about their children's care and education. They say that staff are friendly and approachable and are always willing to talk to them and offer advice. Parents particularly appreciate the displays of their children's work and photographs of them during activities.

They report this helps them talk to their children about their day and continue learning at home.Managers meet regularly with staff and offer some coaching and training, including safeguarding and first-aid training. However, they do not make full use of these opportunities to help monitor staff's performance and identify ways to raise the quality of teaching to the highest level.

Managers reflect on the provision and identify areas for improvement, sharing these with staff and parents to seek their views. They have introduced more natural resources for the children to explore and use creatively to encourage their imaginations, indoors and outdoors.Staff check the children's progress regularly and identify any areas where children need additional support.

Staff work effectively with outside agencies to put in place plans and promote children's development. Children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those learning English as an additional language, make good progress in relation to their starting points.Children have plenty of opportunities to develop their literacy skills.

Young babies enjoy listening to stories and are eager to lift the flaps to reveal the pictures. Toddlers enjoy singing songs and say they 'like nursery when the music lady comes'. They use glue sticks and pencils to strengthen their hand muscles in readiness for early writing.

Pre-school children learn the initial sounds of words and experiment with sounds.Staff are good role models to the children. Staff talk to the children and one another respectfully.

They encourage the children to use their manners, for example saying 'please' and 'thank you'. Children behave well. They show kindness to their friends, for instance gently patting a younger baby when they are crying.

Children play together cooperatively, for example when working together to build ramps, and learn to share the resources. They show good levels of confidence and self-esteem.Children show a positive attitude towards their learning and show they are keen to experiment.

Children build ramps to roll the balls down and find crates to collect them at the bottom. However, at times, staff step in too quickly and offer the children solutions, rather than encouraging them to test their ideas and solve problems for themselves. For example, staff move the ramps to an angle, when children have laid them flat, before children have tested them out for themselves.

Children have lots of opportunities to learn about healthy lifestyles. They enjoy regular outdoor physical play, such as riding scooters and balance bikes, climbing on equipment and the visiting 'rugby tots' sessions. Staff talk to the children as they eat their nutritious home-cooked meals, explaining the vegetables will make them 'big and strong and ready for playing outdoors'.

Children develop independence skills. Young children serve their food, pour their drinks and put on their coats and boots to go outdoors, for example.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

The manager has recently updated the nursery's safeguarding policy and procedure and provided all base rooms with a copy. Staff have a suitable knowledge of child protection issues and can quickly reference the procedure to follow if concerned about a child's welfare or the conduct of a colleague. Managers follow robust recruitment procedures for all new staff to check they are suitable to work with the children.

Staff follow effective risk assessments to keep children safe and secure in the nursery. They help young children learn to keep themselves safe as they follow clear instructions when walking downstairs, for example.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: nimprove coaching and supervision of staff to focus more precisely on raising the quality of teaching to the highest level noffer children more opportunities to test their ideas and solve simple problems for themselves.