Buttons@brooklands

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The curriculum that children follow promotes their extensive interest in learning. By promoting children's natural impulse to explore and discover, staff give children the best possible foundations to advance in their future learning. Staff are highly skilful practitioners, whose considered teaching enables children to try, and sometimes be unsuccessful, such as when mixing ingredients together to make dough. By having the confidence to persevere and try again, children build resilience and confidence in their own abilities. Furthermore, children are eager to keep trying, showing their superb tenacity and sheer joy of learning.

Children are confident communicators who approach adults to initiate conversation. They pose questions, guess, and offer ideas, drawing on what they know and understand about the things that interest them. During the inspection, children showed a great deal of understanding about weight and measure. By using a weight, they estimated and compared weight and were able to accurately use their understanding of 'lighter' and 'heavier'.

Children's behaviour is consistently excellent. Children practice rules, such as lining up at snack time. Staff encourage them to share and take turns, and develop their social skills. By understanding expectations, children have clear boundaries that help them to feel safe and secure. In turn, children can moderate their behaviour. Older children are excellent role models, who help the younger children to understand and follow the pre-school routine.

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

• The curriculum is ambitious and well planned. Staff identify precisely what children need to learn, and ensure that they build on what they know and can do already. Staff carefully consider how they develop the environment. They provide activities and experiences that help to shape children's learning. As a result, the staff implement the curriculum exceptionally well, allowing children the freedom to explore and find things out for themselves. In turn, this motivates children to be highly inquisitive and curious in their play and learning.
• Support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is extremely effective, and children with SEND make excellent progress. Staff are acutely aware of what support children need and tailor the curriculum to meet their needs. Their rapid intervention and close work with other professionals and parents ensures that there is a cohesive approach to supporting children's development.
• Children are highly confident and articulate. They express their ideas and views of the world concisely and with enthusiasm. Children retell their understanding of stories, adding their own views and interpretation of the illustrations. Children refer to books to find out about things that interest them, such as animals. This demonstrates their superb awareness of the huge benefits of literature.
• Staff recognise that some children do not have homes with a garden where they can play outdoors. They design the curriculum to focus on children having ample opportunities to be physically active and enjoy fresh air and exercise. Trips outside of the pre-school further ignite children's learning and enable them to encounter new experiences. For example, there are mutual benefits of children joining with a community dementia group to take part in physical activities and exercise.
• Key-person relationships are exceptionally strong and staff form close, professional relationships with parents and families. This has huge benefits for supporting children as they settle at the pre-school. The warm and inclusive approach supports all children to feel welcome. Within the pre-school, children show empathy and respect for staff and each other. This creates a happy and productive environment where all children thrive.
• The manager and provider go above and beyond expectations when there is any concern about children's welfare. Their tenacity and confidence to challenge and question ensures that children have the best possible outcomes.
• Vulnerable children are identified early on. Additional funding is used with maximum benefit to provide children with experiences and teaching that help to enrich their learning.
• The provider and manager discuss the importance of investing in staff through promoting and encouraging professional development and career progression. By supporting staff to continue to learn and develop their skills, they remain motivated and enthused by their work.
• The provider is an inspirational leader whose infectious passion and dedication to her work demands only the very best for children. Her uncompromising commitment to sustaining outstanding practice is communicated well to her staff team. All staff share her vision and excel in all aspects of their work. Consequently, this means that children benefit enormously from attending the pre-school.