Fizzy Fish @ Peter Gladwin

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive at pre-school with big smiles and greet their friends and staff excitedly. They feel completely happy, safe and secure with the nurturing and attentive staff. Children enjoy their time playing and exploring the stimulating environment and confidently lead their learning. For example, they independently look through books, build complex structures out of blocks and complete challenging puzzles. Children are very motivated in their play and become absorbed in the wide range of experiences available.

Children move freely between the indoor and outdoor environment, which is well planned to meet their interests and development. Outdoors, children develop strong physical skills, balance and coordination, such as when riding scooters, bicycles and climbing the 'pirate ship'. Children respond well to challenges and show a positive 'can-do attitude'. For example, they showed strong concentration as staff encouraged them to focus on throwing and catching balls carefully. After successfully catching a ball, children celebrated excitedly, showing pride in their achievements.

Children are well supported by staff, who have high expectations for what children can achieve. Children are kind and caring towards others and develop strong friendships. For instance, as they built towers together, they happily passed along blocks and praised each other, saying 'I love your tower'.

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

• The dedicated manager and staff are a strong team. Together, they create a broad and challenging curriculum, based on preparing children well for school. The environment and activities are carefully planned to build on what children know and can do, to help them achieve their next steps in learning. For example, children complete number puzzles to support their mathematical development and count pictures on puzzles pieces to match written numbers. They also count how many blocks they use in their construction and how many sides are on different shapes, showing strong mathematical development.
• Staff know the children well and support their learning successfully. For example, as staff read stories to children, they encourage children to think about the characters and events in great depth. However, staff do not always manage larger group activities fully effectively to engage and include all children throughout. For instance, some activities are too long for the younger children, who lose focus towards the end. During the inspection, less experienced staff took some children for their routine nappy change during a group activity, which meant those children missed out on being fully included.
• The manager and staff are strong role models for children and treat each other and the children with the utmost respect. Staff create a highly positive atmosphere, which helps children to feel valued, listened to and supported. Children behave very well and understand the expectations in place. They actively include each other, such as when developing their imaginary play in the 'pirate ship'. Parents are delighted with their children's developing confidence, behaviour and social skills.
• Staff support children's well-being successfully and teach them to understand and manage their emotions. For example, children talk about how they feel today and why, such as being excited for an upcoming birthday. However, staff do not fully support children's understanding of diversity. They do not give children a broad range of experiences to learn about people, communities and cultures beyond their own experiences.
• Staff focus well on children's language development. They read children lots of stories, sing songs and encourage interesting conversation. Children speak well and communicate their needs confidently. The manager reflects closely on the pre-school and supports staff professional development successfully. Staff have regular meetings to discuss their practice and complete relevant training to help improve their skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• plan and manage group activities more effectively to fully include and engage all children throughout
• focus teaching more on children's understanding of diversity and people, communities and cultures beyond their own experiences.