Ducklings Monkston @ St Barts

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show a keen curiosity in all aspects of their play. They confidently explore and extend their play by transporting resources from inside to outside. Staff have developed an effective curriculum that successfully identifies children's needs and uses their interests to extend their experiences, thinking and knowledge. Staff use children's interests to plan for their next steps in learning and to close any identified gaps in their development. For example, outdoors, staff encourage children to use digging tools to explore mud, especially children who have not experienced this before.

Staff use information about children's home lives to enhance and enrich their experiences in the pre-school. For example, children confidently experiment with a wealth of new experiences outdoors, such as discovering plants, leaves and bugs, and they use tools that they may not have used before.

Children learn to develop personal care skills quickly and purposefully. They use staff demonstrations and explanations well to help understand the importance of routine hygiene procedures. For example, children follow pictorial aids and listen to staff when washing their hands after toileting and before snack time. Children learn to make healthy choices at snack time. They use knives to cut stalks off strawberries and to chop bananas into chunks. They independently find their boots to play in the nature garden and attempt to put them on themselves. Children confidently communicate and express their needs through words, gestures, expressions and pictorial aids.

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

• Children are settled gradually into the pre-school. Staff help them to become aware of their environment and guide them through the routine of the day. Staff use calm conversations and gestures to aid children's understanding. Staff gather some information from parents before children start to attend the pre-school. However, this is not consistently used to full effect to support children to feel reassured, welcome and secure. This results in some children taking longer to form effective attachments and bonds with their key person.
• Children's physical development is highly promoted. Children enthusiastically try new movements and staff successfully help them to learn from others. For example, children copy others using plastic hoops and wriggle their hips to make them move down their bodies. Staff understand the importance of developing children's core strength to enable them to use their bodies more effectively. They encourage children to balance, move creatively and use equipment imaginatively. For example, children think about how to move across the raised ladder bridge independently. They carefully balance and stay safe across the equipment.
• Children learn to develop friendships with their peers. Staff encourage them to work together to learn new skills. For example, staff ask children to show each other how to make pens work. They use these together to make marks for a purpose. They show their marks proudly to all staff. Other children show a clear understanding of what is appropriate behaviour. They confidently tell staff when their friends' actions have an impact on their emotions.
• The management team works closely with staff to make improvements and promote the impact this has on children's care and development. Management and staff have made significant improvements since the pre-school's last inspection. However, the management team does not always encourage staff to reflect on their immediate practice or make prompt changes to have a bigger impact on children's learning and experiences.
• Staff develop professional relationships with other agencies and practitioners to provide a consistent approach to children's lives. Staff work closely with school staff to provide a smooth transition for when children move on to their next stage of learning. They develop good communication links with other providers to promote continuity for children's learning.
• Parents make positive comments about the quality of care and learning children receive. They receive regular information from staff's communications, through social media platforms and via verbal feedback at the start and end of the sessions. Staff provide ideas and guidance on how to support children's learning at home.
• Staff source local information and use this effectively to relate to the community in which children live. This helps to support families and their children and highly reflects children's backgrounds and different ways of living. As a result, children learn to appreciate and respect each other's backgrounds and feel proud of their own cultures.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• use information and initial observations more effectively to fully support children to settle in and develop secure bonds and attachments with staff
• develop staff's confidence to change practice promptly to make a bigger impact on children's experiences and learning.