Aylesford Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children happily come into pre-school and engage in play straight away. Staff lay out activities which they know will interest and settle all children. The pre-school provides a small, family feel to support children's emotional well-being. Children thrive here, while freely exploring their surroundings, and regularly seek cuddles from staff. They enjoy watching staff intently while stories are read to them. They jump and clap with delight and then sit close, smile and engage with the story.

Children demonstrate good behaviour and an understanding of the rules and routines. They take turns on the rope swing and climbing around the apparatus. They enjoy helping each other with tasks, such as measuring out the ingredients for play dough. They show kindness when helping a lost bug find a suitable home.

Staff provide a range of exciting activities to captivate all children. These include water exploration, with added tweezers and bugs, and weighing different foods using scales. Staff have high expectations for all children and are good at involving everyone, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The curriculum is skilfully planned to build on what children already know. For example, children explore different animals and vegetables because they have visited the farm and grown their own food in the allotments. This prepares children well for the next stage in their learning.

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

• Staff provide a curriculum that is well planned, structured and delivered successfully. It builds on children's prior learning and knowledge. Staff use assessment and observation well to identify gaps and track progress. This supports all children to make good progress across the curriculum.
• Staff have high ambitions for all children, including those with SEND. Staff use funding well. For example, they purchase resources to support children's concentration and mobility, and organise training to develop staff's knowledge of supporting language development. Songs are used to support children's understanding. Children's faces light up with pure joy as they can follow signs and words to sing with their peers.
• Staff skilfully extend children's learning and provide them with suitable challenges. For example, they ask them to use tweezers to find a certain number of bugs or certain letters in the water. Staff also ask children to show and instruct them on how to make play dough animals. This supports all children to develop a greater breadth of learning and knowledge and feel confident and proud.
• All staff are consistently good at supporting children to develop language. For example, staff introduce the words 'grainy' and lentils' when exploring the animal play dough, and 'heavier', 'lighter', 'sink' and 'float' when investigating water. This supports all children to develop a greater breadth of language.
• All staff read clearly and in an exciting, engaging way. Children frequently ask for stories and listen intently. They thoroughly enjoy finishing familiar story sentences and acting out 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'. This helps children build a love of reading and encourages them to have a positive attitude to learning.
• Staff promote independence, resilience and confidence in all children. Staff consistently encourage children to have a go and they model new skills to them. Then they allow children the time to do it themselves, highly praising them when they succeed. This supports children to feel confident and develop a 'can-do' attitude to learning.
• Staff support children learning English as an additional language well and their language skills develop quickly. However, staff are less strong at supporting children to understand different cultures. This does not support children so well to understand the similarities and differences between each other and to develop a sense of self.
• Leaders have a clear vision for providing high-quality, inclusive care and education to all children. They support staff to develop their own skills well through training, and staff feel valued as part of a team. This results in them working well together to provide the best outcomes for children.
• Leaders have maintained good relationships with all families throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting them when the pre-school was shut. Parents speak very highly of the setting. They say that 'all teachers are amazing, caring and understanding', and that they 'have a real love and passion for looking after and supporting our little ones'.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen staff's understanding of different cultures and how to support children to celebrate these, to provide children with a more in-depth knowledge of similarities and differences.