Daisychain Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are keen to join in with the wide range of motivating play activities provided. Staff plan a curriculum designed to support and build on children's individual abilities and help them make good progress. Children enter the pre-school happily and form secure relationships with staff, which helps them to feel safe. Children learn to be kind and helpful to others. They willingly help to tidy up their toys. Children feel valued when staff give them a sticker for being good tidy-up helpers.

Children benefit from going on interesting outings with staff to develop their understanding of their community and the world. They visit a farm and see animals, such as miniature pigs and donkeys. They go on a bus with staff to the cathedral of a nearby town and also visit a museum, where they see a display of model woolly mammoths. Children enjoy being creative. For example, they become absorbed sprinkling gold glitter on their pictures and eagerly mix paints. They tell staff, 'We mixed red and blue and have made purple'. Children like fitting the pieces of a train track together and push a model train around it. They begin to use numbers in context and say, 'We have used 22 pieces of track'.

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

• Leaders provide ongoing opportunities for staff to continue their professional development. Staff have recently raised their awareness about the different ways in which children play, and they adapt activities accordingly to encourage children's individual learning.
• Following the COVID-19 pandemic, staff identified that a higher majority of children needed more support with their speech development. Staff give a strong focus to promoting children's language skills. They reinforce their words and introduce vocabulary such as 'submarine' and 'hot air balloons' to encourage their discussion. They give children time to communicate their ideas. Young children begin to confidently use three- and four-word sentences.
• Parents speak highly of staff and say that staff keep them well informed of their children's daily activities and well-being. Staff give parents ideas for activities to do at home with their children. However, staff have not considered gathering further information about children's starting points to plan activities to support their individual learning right from the start.
• Staff support children's early literacy skills well. They read stories often with children and encourage further discussion. For example, they ask children about the whales and sharks in the pictures of a story about the sea.
• Staff identify children's next developmental steps based on their observations of their play. They use this information to plan activities to engage children's interests and involvement. For example, children like making pretend meals in the home corner and develop their imaginations well. They make a visitor a meal and say, 'It's a chocolate and strawberry cake and a macaroni cheese pizza'.
• Leaders work well with staff to make continual improvements. For example, they have reviewed children's use of the climbing frame and where this is sited. However, staff have not fully considered further ways to encourage children's awareness of keeping themselves and others safe, such as when using the larger play equipment.
• Children enjoy a variety of activities to help develop their physical skills. They enthusiastically shake their legs and arms and turn themselves around when playing a ring game. They learn to control their body movements in a yoga session and follow the actions to a favourite song.
• Children behave well. Staff praise children often and thank them for helping others. Children get to know the established boundaries and play cooperatively.
• Leaders and staff have reviewed the layout of the playroom and are now developing a calmer environment indoors. They have introduced more natural resources to support children's learning. However, they do not always monitor the range of resources and activities outdoors to ensure they cover all areas of children's learning more consistently.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the information gathered from parents at registration to enable staff to plan activities more securely based on children's existing skills and starting points
• provide more opportunities for children to learn how to keep themselves and others safe, such as when using the large play equipment
• make better use of play opportunities in the outside area to fully support children's interests and promote all aspects of their learning consistently well, with particular regard to those children who learn best outdoors.