Cross Hayes Pre School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have fun and enjoy their time in this welcoming pre-school. They arrive eager to explore the stimulating activities and resources on offer. Children demonstrate they feel safe and secure. The friendly and caring staff team skilfully support less confident children to settle on arrival and engage in play. Staff successfully help children to play together cooperatively, for example, when children take turns using sticks to scoop mud from bowls in the mud kitchen to 'feed' toy people.

The manager and staff get to know all children extremely well and have high aspirations for them. They implement a broad curriculum that motivates children to learn. Staff provide children with interesting provocations, such as fake 'monster fur', to ignite their curiosity. Consequently, children become deeply absorbed in their imaginative play as monsters. Older children recognise written numerals and recall that a one and a zero also makes a 10. They learn to make simple calculations and persevere to complete shape puzzles.

The special educational needs coordinator is proactive in observing children to identify any delays in their development. She implements individual support plans and works with parents and other professionals as needed, to help close gaps in children's learning. As a result, all children, including funded children, those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and those who speak English as an additional language, make good progress.

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

• The manager and staff report that they are well supported by the management committee. The manager evaluates staff practice accurately. She observes them to identify strengths and target areas for development. She supports staff to undertake training to extend their knowledge and skills further and uses additional funding appropriately to support children. The manager is proactive to make changes to meet the requirements. For example, she has recently introduced new accident forms to ensure records are sufficiently detailed. She now ensures mandatory information about parents is recorded, including parental responsibility.
• The programme for communication and language is strong. Staff talk to children constantly. They introduce new vocabulary and ask children effective questions to encourage them to think and respond. Children thoroughly enjoy joining in with songs and rhymes, such as when they pretend to be bus drivers, taking turns to hold the steering wheel. Children recall songs they have learned and are often heard singing independently as they play. Overall, staff successfully spark children's interests in books and stories. Children snuggle up to staff on the sofa to listen to stories, although, sometimes, not all children focus fully during daily whole-group story time, which occasionally distracts others. Nevertheless, children explore books independently, sit and 'read' stories to each other, and re-enact stories in their play.
• Children gain good physical skills. They climb, move over and under equipment, and balance on planks. They enjoy using toy diggers to scoop leaves into wheelbarrows and negotiate obstacles well when they enthusiastically push the wheelbarrows around the garden. Staff provide children with plenty of opportunities to practise their mark-making skills, indoors and outdoors. Children concentrate as they experiment with water colours and paint using fine brushes. They describe what they are doing and show pride as they tell adults about their artwork.
• Children are confident to pour their own drinks, serve themselves food and clear away their plates after eating. Staff encourage children to put on their wellington boots and all-weather suits before they go outside to play, to extend their independence skills in readiness for school. However, at times, children have to wait too long during daily routines, which does not make the most of their play and learning time.
• Staff use a range of effective strategies to support children's positive behaviour and to help them understand their emotions. Children learn to respect resources and staff encourage them to help protect the environment. For example, as children tidy up, staff remind them to scrunch up wastepaper, so that it can be recycled. Staff help all children to form friendships and children wave and call out 'bye friends' as they leave to go home.
• Parents speak highly of the staff and the pre-school. They feel involved in their children's learning. Staff welcome parents into the pre-school and they share a two-way flow of information sharing about children at drop off and collection. Staff work with parents effectively to toilet train children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the organisation of daily routines to make the best use of children's time, to support and extend their learning even further.