Acorn2Oak Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are warmly welcomed into the pre-school by the nurturing staff, who know them well. Children immediately feel safe in their environment and are eager to learn. This is because staff consider their individual interests and provide opportunities for children to be active and make choices in their play. For instance, some children decide to create a flag using arts and crafts to celebrate St. George's Day. Others dress up and engage in role play, using props such as dragon puppets.

Staff are responsive to the needs of the children, who seek them out if they need support or comfort. Children play well with each other and have formed good friendships. They talk together during their play and share their thoughts and ideas. As children patiently wait for their turn to jump into a muddy puddle, staff praise their courteous behaviours, which reinforce the behaviours expected of them.

There is a strong focus on outdoor learning with plenty of opportunities to explore the natural environment. Children had the exciting opportunity to watch the incubation process and hatching of baby chickens. While having great fun watching their baby chicks grow, children are also learning about the importance of responsibility and how to care for living things.

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

• The management team identify curriculum priorities, such as providing children with opportunities to develop their social skills, build relationships and become independent learners. Staff implement their curriculum well. For example, staff encourage children to sit on a chair to assist them in putting on their shoes. Because children have something to lean their back against, and are given plenty of space and time, they begin to succeed. Staff also provide encouragement, which increases children's concentration and perseverance to keep trying to develop their skills.
• Overall, teaching is good, and staff have a good understanding of how different-age children learn. Although children enjoy the learning activities on offer, at times, staff do not always notice and respond to teaching opportunities during children's play to extend their learning to the highest level.
• Staff use fun interactions to motivate and extend children's learning. For example, while children happily scoop coloured rice into piles, staff increase their understanding of mathematics by asking children which pile has 'more' or 'less'. Staff start to add more and take away rice, which adds meaningful context to learning. Children are keen to explore and start to build connections in what is being taught.
• Staff provide children with many opportunities to develop their literacy skills, which helps them as they prepare for school. Children enjoy writing for purpose and practise writing their name as they pretend to play 'schools' with their peers. Children are developing a love of books and reading. They often share books with their friends and read on their own. For those children struggling with expressing their feelings, staff support them by considering themes about emotions and well-being when selecting individual books to read to them.
• The management team and staff instigate effective partnership working with the local school and other professionals, such as speech and language therapists, to help secure timely and relevant support for children now and when they transition to school. As a result, all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), make good progress and have support to achieve their best outcomes.
• The management team is dedicated to continually improving the service it provides. Long-standing staff report very good well-being. Staff can access an online provider to complete training that interests them and develops their practice further. Although staff's practice is observed and training opportunities are discussed, leaders have not considered further ways to sharpen processes to help staff improve their teaching skills and practice to a consistently high level.
• Parents talk incredibly highly of the progress their children make and how they feel part of a family at the setting. Staff communicate well with parents. For instance, they provide daily updates on children's care and learning and invite parents to meetings to discuss children's progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on the already good teaching and support staff to recognise when to further challenge children's learning to help move them on to the next stage
• enhance methods of coaching staff to identify areas for development that help to raise the quality of their practice to a consistently high level across all areas of the pre-school.