Early Years Playgroup

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show positive relationships with staff. They benefit from staff spending time with them and getting to know them as individuals. If necessary, children receive a reassuring hand to hold from staff to help them to feel safe and secure. Children are happy and visibly show their enjoyment of spending time at the playgroup. For example, they laugh with staff and their friends when they play a game of hide and seek. Children behave well and work as a team to build and construct using foam bricks.

Children show good hand and eye coordination. Older children use toy hammers safely to bang pegs into a cork board. Younger children roll balls down a drainpipe and collect them at the end. They learn how to solve problems, such as when the drainpipe falls off a stand at one end. Children think about how to secure it back in position. Children are encouraged to develop their literacy skills. For example, older children are supported to recognise the initial sound of letters at the beginning of their name. They are given opportunities to recognise their written name. Children are offered experiences to learn about their local community and people who help them. For example, the manager spends additional funding for individual children to support their interests. This includes taking them to see a fire station.

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

• The manager and staff have a curriculum in place to support children to progress in their development. This includes encouraging them to complete tasks on their own, in preparation for future learning. Children pour their own drinks and cut up fruit. They are shown strategies to use to put on their coats and jackets by themselves.
• The manager supports her staff through supervision meetings. Staff are encouraged to extend their professional development. This helps them to develop further ways to support children's communication and language skills. Overall, staff support children well. For example, they show children how to use sign language when they sing a please and thank you song with children before they eat lunch. However, children who speak English as an additional language do not always have opportunities to hear and use their home language in play and learning. This does not fully support their overall language development.
• Staff say that they feel supported by the manager with their well-being. For example, they appreciate the manager thanking them at the end of each day for their work.
• Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities are supported well by staff. They receive specific training to enable them to use and maintain specialist equipment for individual children. This helps to promote their care needs. Staff work in partnership with parents and other professionals to provide a tailored level of care and support for children's learning.
• Staff know the children well and provide them with activities that allows them to follow their interests. For example, children play with construction toys after they see a construction site on their way to the playgroup. However, occasionally staff do not encourage children to build on what they already know and can do. One example of this is when staff do not encourage children to extend their counting skills.
• Staff give children lots of praise and encouragement for their achievements, helping to raise their self-esteem. For example, when children peel a banana, staff say, 'fantastic, well done'. When children wash their own cup after snack time, staff ask to give them a 'high five'.
• Staff ensure that children receive daily fresh air and exercise. Outdoors, younger children are physically active when they are shown how to jump in and out of hoops on the floor. However, when they are preparing to go outside, staff do not fully help younger children to understand and follow the instructions they give them.
• Parents are kept informed of their children's progress. They receive reports showing their children's achievements and pictures of activities they enjoy. Parents are supported to continue their children's learning at home. For example, they are encouraged to read books their children take home from the playgroup's lending library.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to develop their understanding of how to support language development for children who speak English as an additional language
• help staff to build on what children already know and can do
• strengthen staff's knowledge of how to help younger children to understand and follow the instructions they give them.