Crescent Under Fives

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happy and show much affection for the caring staff team. They form strong emotional bonds with staff and demonstrate a sense of belonging in the safe environment. Staff know their key children well and have clear intentions for what they want children to learn next. Children are eager to play and motivated to learn. They play cooperatively with their friends and clearly enjoy their time they spend at the pre-school. Staff sequence children's learning well to support their progress over time. As a result, all children make good progress.

Staff are very sensitive in supporting children who initially struggle to settle into the setting. They work closely with parents to ease the transition from home. Staff plan a broad and inclusive curriculum around the children's interests. Children busily play in a calm environment where they can explore various resources. They thoroughly enjoy being physically active outside, where they climb, paint, care for the plants and develop small muscle movements as they use pegs to hang socks on the line. Children squeal with excitement as they observe and compare how far they can roll toy cars, when launched down a tube.

Staff understand and support children's behaviour effectively through the use of positive language, guidance, targets and encouragement. Overall, children are respectful of their environment and display good behaviour. Staff help children build a positive sense of self and celebrate their various skills, cultures and languages.

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

• The recently appointed pre-school leaders have made a positive impact in a short time. They have worked closely with the staff team to prioritise improvements to the environment, organisation of the sessions and staff morale.
• Staff plan an interesting curriculum that it is ambitious and has high expectations of what the children can learn. Children benefit from the learning opportunities that staff provide. This helps to inspire and engage children in their learning at pre-school. For example, children eagerly investigate growth and life cycles and predict what may happen when adding water drops to paper caterpillars made in an experiment. Overall, staff involve the children in making decisions about their play and their learning. In this way, children learn to become confident, independent and resilient learners.
• Children's communication and language skills are given a high priority. Staff encourage children to become confident communicators and use every opportunity to engage children in meaningful conversations. Children join in with familiar and interesting singing and story times, which staff lead well. Staff teach children about heathy eating and talk about the different fruits available at snack time. Children excitedly link this to their focus book of 'The very hungry caterpillar'.
• Leaders target any additional funding effectively. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities benefit from additional adult support to enable them to access the curriculum and continue to learn safely. Staff fully utilise the advice they receive from other professionals when completing children's personalised learning plans.
• Staff organise the learning environment well. They position themselves around to support children's play and ensure children are always vigilantly supervised. The daily routine is consistent and well established. However, there are times during the day when children's play is stopped for routine activities. This means children do not have enough time to fully explore their own chosen emerging interests.
• Partnerships with parents are good. Staff share information with them in a range of ways. For example, they talk to them at handover times and share relevant learning and development information using the online platform. Parents are very happy with the care and education their children receive. They speak highly of the staff. Parents feel welcomed, supported and informed. They comment on how happy their children are to attend.
• The manager knows her staff well because she works closely alongside them. She welcomes open team discussions and supervision sessions are in the early stages of development. Staff attend mandatory training such as safeguarding and paediatric first aid and keep their knowledge and skills up to date. However, the coaching and monitoring of staff is not fully embedded and an area of focus, to help strengthen and raise the quality of teaching to even higher levels.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation between routine tasks and activities, so that children have more time to develop their emerging interests
• continue to monitor and focus on strengthening staff practice to raise the quality of teaching practice to even higher levels.