Child First Aylesbury Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children love coming to this stimulating and welcoming setting. They behave well and are respectful of others. Children form affectionate bonds with staff, who are responsive to their needs. They engage well as they play on their own and with friends. Children freely choose from a range of exciting activities on offer, indoors and outdoors. They readily make up their own games and play safely. Children gain in confidence as their contributions are valued and praised by the staff. For example, children give instructions to a staff member on different ways to jump over a wooden plank. Others join in and practise jumping over the plank in a variety of ways. The sideways jump proves a real favourite. This helps children to feel a sense of pride in their achievements.

Children have positive attitudes to learning and make good progress from their starting points. They are keen to help others, for instance when they fasten their friend's shoes. Children show growing independence and manage their own care needs throughout the day. They are inquisitive and happily engage in conversations. Children welcome visitors and ask sensible questions. They are keen to find out how to say 'hello' in different languages and practise saying the words. This helps children to make connections between their own language and those of others.

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

• The newly appointed pre-school manager is passionate about providing the best possible education and care for children at the setting. She has already made some positive changes to the provision, including monitoring staff's practice and supporting them in their curriculum delivery. Overall, staff interact well to enhance children's learning. However, at times, when working with small groups of children, they do not ensure that children use good discussion techniques effectively. For example, when talking about nocturnal animals, children speak over each other and do not listen attentively to others' contributions. As a result, children's learning is not maximised.
• Staff gather sufficient knowledge from parents at the start, to find out what children know and can do. They use this information to carefully establish children's individual next steps in learning and adopt a tailored approach to meet these successfully. Leaders and staff identify and monitor persistent gaps in children's learning and address these effectively. For instance, when some boys demonstrate a reluctance to write, this is addressed successfully through well-planned activities to improve hand muscle control, such as using chunky pens to draw on large strips of foil. This helps all children to make good progress.
• Staff place importance on the teaching of early literacy skills. Children are encouraged to develop a love for books. They answer simple questions about the pictures and the story content. Children have ample opportunities to practise mark making. They show a growing understanding that their marks carry meaning. For instance, they enjoy drawing people in sand, and relate their marks to spikey hair on the person's head. Children recognise and try to write their own names. This demonstrates that children are motivated to learn.
• Children learn to adopt a healthy lifestyle. They are physically active and enjoy ample opportunities to play in the spacious, well-resourced garden. Children climb, balance and run with increased concentration as they take their time to perfect these skills. They eat nutritious meals and know that vegetables are healthy. This helps to promote children's good health and emotional well-being.
• Leaders and staff understand how children who speak English as an additional language develop competency in spoken English. They work closely with parents and collect a bank of everyday words, such as 'book' and 'toilet', in children's home language. This helps children's understanding and aids a smoother transition into pre-school. Several members of staff speak children's home languages as well as English. This aids better communication with parents too.
• Parents speak highly of the provision and comment on the good progress their children make. They value staff's attention in identifying their children's needs in a timely way and addressing these effectively. Parents are impressed with the regular updates and suggestions of what they could do at home to support their children's learning. This helps to promote children's continuity in development and care.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• establish good rules of discussion with children, giving special emphasis to listening respectfully and allowing everyone the chance to speak so that their learning is maximised.